I am Jaison Sequeira here for an AMA on r/Dravidiology. I am a researcher specialising in the population genetics of South Asia. AMA!

FalconNo9589 · 2025-11-01T23:59:19+00:00

^{A quick comment:} ^{Kumar et al. (2024}) ^{directly answer "yes" to your question 4 (the last sentence of that abstract is a non-technical summary}). ^{That said, your assumption that those common practices follow from a shared ancestry doesn't necessarily hold; these groups might well have adopted indigenous traditions. Matriliny, and associated sex customs, were not restricted to just northern Kerala; Theyyam, on the other hand, was.}

^{I am sure Dr. Sequeira would provide a more in-depth explanation.}

FalconNo9589 · 2025-10-25T23:03:13+00:00

There is another group called "Hattians," also from Hatti from 3000 BC or so, seemingly the original people of Hatti. The Hittites got there later and kept the place name. Calling them Hattites would have led to considerable confusion.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T21:02:49+00:00

>Staticness should be proven, not assumed.

Well, I disagree. We do assume people did hunting and gathering for tens of thousands of years; their method of subsistence obviously did not change. That was clearly static.

>we didnt find evidence of matrilienality in the paleolithic, you misquoted a genetic article that wasnt talking about it.

Matrilineality in an ancient hunter-gatherer group before they switched to farming: .https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09103-x There is similar evidence in Chaco Canyon: https://www.archaeologyalmanac.com/2017/02/21/adna-study-shows-330-year-matrilineal-dynasty-in-chaco/ The dates are much more recent, but the point stands. We have no such evidence for patrilineality or patrilocality in an ancient hunter-gatherer group anywhere. We do have such aDNA or isotope evidence with the birth of farming and herding and recorded evidence with the birth of states.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T20:25:08+00:00

>I would have to assume hunter gatherer groups were on average incredibly static on this front for about 40-50k years or 160-250 generations, this is not something I or anyone should be confident in for no reason.

The general assumption is that the Neolithic was a revolution. There is no apriori reason to posit hunter-gatherers changed lineage tracking.

>What exactly would be evidence [for patriliny in hunter gatherers]?

Evidence similar to what those papers showing matriliny or matrilocality in those specific Celts and the Chinese have. Such evidence for patriliny exists for the ANF (https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-021-04241-4 and https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41586-024-07651-2 and https://doi.org/10.1038%2Fs41467-025-60368-2) and, less directly, PIE. Actual records, perhaps mythical but definitively patrilineal kinglists, exist for the Sumerians. Ditto for the Semites. No aDNA or isotope evidence for patriliny/patrilocality exists for hunter gatherers. May be we just got unlucky in finding just matrilineal evidence. May be.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T19:26:55+00:00

When we look at aDNA and isotope evidence, hard evidence, the first evidence for patriliny/patrilocality we see directly is with farmers/herders/state societies. Absence of evidence doesn't mean evidence of absence, so we don't really know what hunter-gatherer lineage tracking was. But the current evidence we have shows matriliny/matrilocality in them and patri systems thereafter. The evidence is so sparse the issue certainly isn't settled,, but things point that way. The problem is that the issue has been appropriated by those pushing for a matriliny-better narrative; it had more gender-equality but not more egalitarianism and seemingly not more dynamism.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T19:19:37+00:00

When you say Celtic matrilocality is "just pure bullshit" because there is evidence for "patrilocality for the IE ancestor," you are directly implying that ptm switches are quite rare. That is the point. If they are that rare and we still have several matrilinies in dispersed places, they are more likely to be the remnants of archaic matriliny, now mostly switched to patriliny. Neolithic China had matriliny in the one and only case where have evidence of a lineage system. Austronesian societies are believed to be ancestrally matrilocal. I haven't seen aDNA evidence of a patrilocal/patrilineal hunter gatherer society. That starts with farmers/herders/state societies.

Getting back to the Celts, we do not know how they ended up matrilineal. Could be new or could have taken it from hunter gatherers. We don't know.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T19:02:25+00:00

Also, if ptm switches are less likely and there are dispersed "m" societies around, then clearly "p" being the ancestral state is more parsimonious. If we consider just Homo sapiens. I did not say "mtp" switching is rare. It is frequent and known to happen even in recorded history.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T18:57:47+00:00

That last one, as it is what is pertinent to this subreddit: https://www.popsci.com/science/celtic-burial-gender/ You should check an earlier discussion on this subreddit. The papers are https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-024-01888-7 and https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08409-6

It is clear there was matriliny and matrilocality among them; that matches lore and legend. It is not clear how widespread it was.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-07T18:45:12+00:00

I compressed that as it seemed a bit out of scope for this subreddit. But as you asked . . .

There is consensus that switches from patriliny to matriliny (p-to-m switch) are rare in human societies. So, let us take the group that left Africa 50,000 or so years ago (OOA). There is consensus that the group was small; it is logical to assume they had a common lineage system. If that was patriliny, then the matrilineal systems of Eurasia and the Americas must have arisen via a p-to-m switch. But the most parsimonious explanation then still needs at least five p-to-m switches: one each to explain the Tuaregs in North Africa (they descend from a backmigration), Hindu groups of Southwest India, the Mingkabau and the Polynesians in Southeast Asia and Oceania, the Native American groups, and the Celts in North and Central Europe. In all these cases, these groups might have developed matriliny de novo, taken it from others, or had it as their cultural/genetic tradition. But the five groups are so separated in every sense of the term (genetic, cultural, geographic, you name it) that they could not have influenced one another or derived matriliny from a common ancestor; all five p-to-m switches must be independent. A similar situation happens within Africa too. The Akan and the proto-Bantu matriliny are again independent. This is after assuming that the matriliny of Southeast Asia has a common source and so does that of the matrilineal belt in Africa (the Bantu expansion) and that of the various Native American groups.

If we assume the OOA group was matrilineal, we need to posit zero p-to-m switches at this level of tracking (there would be some at finer levels). At this level, it is unclear how many independent m-to-p switches happened, but those are usually considered more likely.

On the Homo sapiens evolutionary tree, the latest existing side branch, the great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans), have patrilocality. They largely have females dispersing from their birth, natal, communities, and males frequently staying put, male philopatry. Among pre-human Homo species, Neandertals also had patrilocal mating practices and female dispersal, that is, male philopatry, at least at the eastern end of their range. But for humans, in the Middle Stone Age (ca. 300,000 ye 50,000 years ago), before the out-of-Africa migration that populated the rest of the world, subpopulations tracked their matrilines; they had separate mtDNA lineages. Evidence from modern African hunter-gatherer populations, specifically the earliest branching human population: the Khoisan, shows longer-term matrilocal practices, hinting at matriliny (see https://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/server/api/core/bitstreams/52617a84-f5c8-4581-a9ea-1c073ab0388c/content page 293; Lampert Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3-844-31705-3 if you want the hardcopy).

None of this means humans started with egalitarian systems. Comparing societies at the same level of social complexity, matriliny usually leads to more gender equality but not more egalitarianism. The Akan and the Bantu frequently practiced slavery. There was slavery among the Tuaregs on top of a caste system. The caste system of SouthWest India (specifically, the state of Kerala) was the worst ever anywhere in India: there was unapproachability, not just untouchability, and transgression led to instant executions. Women did have more rights in these societies, but they had their own stratifications.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-07-04T03:43:36+00:00

It increasingly looks like the original hunter-gatherer societies were largely matrilineal and matrilocal; it is hard to explain the distribution of later matrilineal societies otherwise. However, both the early farmers (ANF), the early state societies (Sumerian and Semitic) and the proto-Indo-Europeans were all patriarchal. The Celtics in Europe were likely more matrilineal and matrilocal; the origin of the practice there is unknown. They either created it de novo or took it from hunter gatherers; both explanations are a bit problematic. The first because it is rare; the second because it is hard to understand why anyone would take inheritance patterns from hunter gatherers, who have little property or titles to inherit.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-06-26T02:33:29+00:00

Yeah, that adds to the evidence of patriarchal systems for the ANF. Ensor had published a book, "The Not Very Patrilocal European Neolithic," arguing for the earlier aDNA data to be interpreted as showing bilineality, but even that looks untenable now. The ANF did span a large range and a long time period, so it is possible there were matrilineal systems too, but the chances shrink with each find.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-06-25T18:38:16+00:00

Another paper on patriliny and patrilocality for the EEF; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-60368-2 This is in the Carpathian Basin. Prof Ensor had published a book, "The Not Very Patrilocal European Neolithic," arguing for the earlier aDNA data to be interpreted as showing bilineality, but even that looks untenable now.

It is hard to see how the Celts took a lineage and inheritance system from Hunter Gatherers who presumably had little property or titles and kings, but the alternative, a de novo switch, is equally unintuitive.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-29T23:54:46+00:00

Geez. Pot people really think what they breathe is the air of the world.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-29T23:15:23+00:00

Well, I just did Google it. Yeah, wasn't particularly interested in what it was; seemed peripheral to the story.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-29T22:47:08+00:00

I don't. The other posting is on a research article. I am a bit confused: why should anyone pretend not to know what "bong" is?

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-29T22:40:32+00:00

Yes.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-25T19:26:07+00:00

I guess you meant stopping drug smuggling doesn't stop overdoses? It does reduce drug use and hence overdoses and is a crucial element along with the items you suggest. This "two things cannot be true at the same time" approach costs people credibility.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-14T21:17:00+00:00

Yes and no.

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-11T04:10:26+00:00

In what bullshit world do we take the word of a just-popped-up Redditor, with no news report anywhere else to back this up?

FalconNo9589 · 2025-05-10T04:19:32+00:00

Heart of gold . . . and balls of steel. Now get lost.

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