The Kusunda - A Vanishing Hunting Tribe of Nepal (1968-69)

[@Jomon50]

Thank you for your remarkable documentary video. I just came across the Kusunda people while reading an online article on the Yana ANS (Ancient North Siberian). The Jomon people of Japan (38,000 ya) were indigenous hunter gatherers and their M7 mtDNA came from India, crossed the Himalayas and settled Northeast Asia (Korea) 45,000 ya. The Jomon were related to the Yana, an upper paleolithic European people of Siberia. A recent genomic PCA chart plots the Kusunda and Jomon closely and separately from all the other tested populations. Although the Jomon are extinct in Japan due to assimilation and military genocide by the Yamato Japanese, their Ainu descendants survived in Hokkaido -- which was finally annexed by Japan in 1869. If you research archival photos of Hokkaido Ainu you will see semblances of the Kusunda. Thank you so much for your great work and God bless you!

[@johanreinhard1]

Thank you for your kind words about the video. The notes in the introduction to the video have links to a photo album and some publications that you might find of interest. I would appreciate it if you could send me the bibliographic reference to the genomic PCA chart you mentioned that plots the Kusunda and Jomon. There has also been research on the Y chromosome of the Kusunda that appears to relate them to the earliest inhabitants of North America. Thank you.

[@Jomon50]

@@johanreinhard1 Thank you for the reference information. The PCA chart is found in a Wikipedia article Yana Rhinoceros Horn Site. Click the Archaeogenetics tab. The Kusunda and Jomon samples are marked by asterisks. The reference is hyperlinked and available for download: Communications Biology (2020) Takashi Gakuhari, et al "Ancient Jomon genome sequence analysis sheds light on migration patterns of early East Asian populations," see pg. 3. I actually downloaded this report and read through it back in July but the chart is smaller and has more tested populations so i skimmed over it. Rereading another downloaded article to confirm the Yana - Jomon relationship (see pg. 5, Science Advances, 2021, Niall Cooke, Takashi Gakuhari, et al, "Ancient genomics reveals tripartite origins of Japanese populations") led me to the Wikipedia article for further background info on the Yana which has an enhanced view of the chart. That's when Kusunda popped out for me. My interest has been in the Onge people of the Andaman islands, who are ASI (Ancient South Indian) with ancient Haplogroup D Y-DNA. The Jomon D-M55 Y-DNA is a branch of D-M174 which emerged in the Bangladesh -Myanmar region from Arabia via Africa 70-65,000 ya. However, the chart shows the Onge on the same axis as the Jomon but distant as an isolate population due to the divergence within the D Haplogroup.

[@aayushkaliraj5401]

thanks for this rare and beautiful video. hope you are doing well