A new genetic study has traced the roots of the Coorgs to nearly 3,000 years ago, offering fresh insights and deepening the intrigue around the ancestry of this close-knit population in Karnataka’s western ghats.
The study is the first to probe the genetics of the Coorgs, a community with a distinct socio-cultural identity whose ancestry has long been debated with competing theories linking them to Alexander’s armies, Eurasian settlers, or ancient south Indian people.
The Coorgs, also known as the Kodavas, are a small, tradition-rich community with a distinct martial heritage, customs, and a strong sense of clan-based identity, living in the hilly, forested, and picturesque Kodagu district.
Scientists at the University of Delhi South Campus and the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, analysed genomic signatures in a sample of 144 Coorgs to determine their genetic distances and affinities to other populations.
Their study has revealed that the Coorgs consist of three distinct lineages — classified as Coorg-1, Coorg-2, and Coorg-3. Coorg-3 is the oldest, dating back 98 generations, or nearly 3,000 years ago. Coorg-1 diverged 64 generations ago, around 1,920 years ago. The third group, Coorg-2, emerged more recently — about 330 years ago — from the admixture of Coorg-1 and Coorg-3.
Among the three groups, Coorg-3 stands out as the most distinct. However, the identity of its ancestral source population from 3,000 years ago remains unresolved. The analysis did reveal more recent genetic mixing between Coorg-3 and northwest Indian populations about 23 generations ago, or roughly 690 years ago.
The study, published in Communications Biology, also found that Coorg-1 and Coorg-2 are genetically distinct from other ethnolinguistic groups in Karnataka such as the Kannadigas, Konkanis and Tuluvas.
Members of Coorg-1 show the highest genetic similarity to a hunter-gatherer tribal group called the Palliyars, found in the southern Western Ghats.
The admixture between Coorg-1 and Coorg-3 appears to have begun around 11 generations ago, or 330 years ago, giving rise to Coorg-2.
Practices such as family exogamy and caste endogamy have likely helped preserve the genetic separation of these three lineages over centuries, Delhi University geneticist B.K. Thelma and her co-authors K. Thangaraj, Anirban Mukhopadhyay, Loumos Kumar and Kiran Sran said in their study.
Earlier genetic research has shown that contemporary Indian populations arose from a mix of two ancestral groups — ancestral North Indians and ancestral South Indians — between roughly 1,900 and 4,200 years ago.
But the ancestry of the Coorgs has remained elusive. Scholars have variously proposed links to Alexander’s army during his 4th-century BCE campaign in northwestern India, to Indo-Scythians or Sakas who moved from Central Asia into northwest India in the 2nd century BCE, or to prehistoric inhabitants of the southern Western Ghats.
Analysis of mitochondrial DNA — passed down through mothers — has revealed that about 40 per cent of Coorg maternal lineages are South Asian. Y-chromosome data points to Eurasian, Middle Eastern and India-specificsignatures. These results suggest male-dominated migrations from Eurasian and Middle Eastern regions and subsequent assimilation with local women.