There is genetic evidence that the Roma who live throughout Europe around 900 years ago came from northeastern India to the area of today’s Balkans, according to research by an international team of geneticists.
BELGRADE – There is genetic evidence that the Roma who live throughout Europe around 900 years ago came from northeastern India to the area of today’s Balkans, according to research by an international team of geneticists, published in the scientific journal “Current Biology”.
“With our study, we managed to confirm not only the origin of the Roma, but also to limit the area from which this people originates, which is the northeast of India,” one of the scientists who conducted the research, professor Manfred, told Deutsche Welle. Kaiser from the University of Rotterdam.
According to him, the emigration of Roma from the northeast of India, which today also includes parts of Pakistan, began about 1,500 years ago, and about 900 years ago they came to the area of today’s Balkans, where the separation of that people into eastern and western communities of European Roma began. .
Until now, scientists, mainly based on the similarity of the Romani language with the Indian language, assumed that the members of this ethnic group, which is counted among the most numerous national minorities in almost all European countries, originated from India.
As Deutsche Welle reminds us, linguists were already in the 18th century. century discovered similarities between Romani and Indian Sanskrit.
In Europe today, according to unofficial data, about 11 million Roma live, and the largest groups of that people live in Serbia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Spain.
In the latest study published in the journal “Current Biologists”, earlier assumptions about the origin of the Roma living in Spain are refuted.
For a long time, it was believed that the Spanish Roma, due to their numerous specificities, arrived in Europe via the African continent, but in the latest research, these assumptions were rejected based on numerous genetic samples.