Discussion point please: - Alternative theory that Jats are a remnant population from the the original and very first Steppe MLBA ingress into NW indian Subcontinent. This original Steppe admixture, as per Narasimhan et al 2019 SWAT samples was that this was female mediated. Feel free to disagree - please keep it civil and evidence based.

BACKGROUND

It is a well know fact that Jats have an unusually high % Steppe admixture that is not easily explained by later Steppe ingress (Saka etc.) given that they have no north east Siberian area admixture. It was also pointed out to me recently that Jats have up to 40% Y Haplogroup L (mostly I believe M357) an Indian subcontinent male haplogroup.

I looked on the Family Tree DNA migration map (see attached) which also shows the aDNA samples in SWAT with male haplogroup L. I.e. the population that Narasimhan had identified as having Steppe that was female mediated.

DISCUSSION

Say NW India was originally as a whole (i.e. not just SWAT) female Steppe mediated, and Jats kept true to this through a separate pastoral lifestyle with inbuilt endogamy from the start (not just later when the Caste system kicked in for others). If this is true then Jats will show more mtdna haplogroups than the norm for other Indian populations. Female Steppe lineages (H, U4, U5, T, J, I, K, W) were sampled by Sharma et al. (2023) for Haryana Jats. They identified the Indian mt haplogroup M as the main (\~40%), with Steppe haplogroup H at 13.84% of the population, but unfortunately did not breakdown haplogroup U (\~21% in total) or the rest (\~20%).

However let’s compare the Jat mt haplogroup H alone at 13.84% and compare to the Gujarati equivalent mt H of 2.27% (Alqaisi et al. 2023 forensic genetics study on 176 maternally unrelated individuals from different regions of Gujarat). The Haryana Jat H 13.84% is obviously larger than the Gujarati 2.27% H, but also larger than the overall Gujarati female Steppe haplogroups of 5-10% .

This obviously is not proof, but I believe does give an area for further investigation for our Jat friends (NB I am not Jat myself, and wish to cause no offence) as well as other parties interested in Indian origins.

Alternative Theory for Unusually high % Steppe in Jats on the autosome