The study of the genetics and archaeogenetics of the Gujarati people of India aims at uncovering these people's genetic history. According to the 1000 Genomes Project, "Gujarati" is a general term used to describe people who trace their ancestry to the region of Gujarat, located in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, and who speak the Gujarati language, an Indo-European language. They have some genetic commonalities as well as differences with other ethnic groups of India.
Autosomal DNA
DNA studies According to a 2017 study by European geneticists (Silva et al., 2017), Gujaratis carry predominantly Ancestral North Indian (West Eurasian) genes. The study shows that Gujaratis, Rajasthanis, and Pakistanis are genetically part of Western South Asia. It also mentions: The main non-indigenous component in the Subcontinent, the Iran/Caucasus/Steppe or Caucasus hunter-gatherer component, exceeds 35% in Gujarat. (This component peaks in ancient remains from the Caucasus and Iran at ~100%, and is found in Bronze Age Yamnaya from the Pontic-Caspian steppe at ~50%.) Gujaratis appear to be much more diverse genetically than other South Asians. Gujaratis are proximate to people from South-West Asia, due to high levels of ANI ancestry, which may have arrived in two waves. According to a 2017 study by geneticists from Mangalore (D'Cunha et al., 2017), phylogenetic analysis shows a separation of Dravidian population (sampled from coastal towns of Karnataka and Kerala) from Gujarati population. According to this study, recent studies show that the data on Gujaratis "may not be representative for Indians on whole, particularly for the Dravidian population of southern India". The Dravidian language-speaking individuals included in this study segregated distinctly into a tight cluster away from Indo-Aryan language speakers." The proximity of Gujaratis to Europeans "supported the existing view of European influences in the genetic composition of north Indian populations". According to a 2015 study by British and Pakistani geneticists (Ayub et al., 2015), Europeans split from South Asians (represented by Gujaratis) around 8,000 years ago in the Neolithic period, as supported by LD decay. This study divided humans into five distinct clusters based on allele-frequency differences: (1) Africans, (2) a widespread group including Europeans, Middle Easterners, and South Asians, (3) East Asians, (4) Oceanians, and (5) Native Americans. A 2014 study by Singaporean geneticists (Ali et al., 2014) studied the differences between two sub-populations of India, the Indo-European-speaking Gujaratis (labelled as North Indians) and the Dravidian-speaking Tamils (labelled as South Indians), and found that one of the most apparent differences between them is in skin complexion, with North Indians being much fairer, which points to gene flow from Europe to North India. The study also mentions: Our analysis of haplotype similarity at the SLC24A5 region [which affects skin pigmentation] between the Gujarati Indians also indicated greater degree of sharing with the southern Europeans than with the south Tamil Indians. A 2013 study by geneticists from California (Pemberton et al., 2013) observes that Gujarati individuals form a distinct cluster from other South Asian groups, while all other South Asian groups cluster together. This is "consistent with a neighbor-joining analysis of the combined Asian Indian and CGP data sets that found 100% bootstrap support for a Gujarati grouping." A 2012 study by Irish and Portuguese geneticists (Magalhães et al., 2012) identified five large blocks of similarity: 1) Africa, 2) North Africa, Middle East, Europe and Central-South Asia, 3) East Asia, 4) Americas, and 5) Oceania. The biggest of these is the NA, ME, Europe, and CSA block which corresponds to the Indo-European continental group. Gujaratis were included in the Central South Asia block along with Pakistanis, and the highest AMid (a tool to measure similarity) for Gujaratis is Pathan. The delayed expansion hypothesis was suggested, according to which Gujaratis are descended from an ancestral Eurasian founding population which was isolated long after the Out-of-Africa diaspora before expanding throughout Eurasia. Gujaratis and Burusho showed the highest AMids to East Asians in the CSA block, and were thus said to co-cluster. The CSA was divided into two main groups: Balochi/Brahui/Makrani and another with Burusho and Gujarati in a single cluster. According to a 2011 study by European and Indian geneticists (Metspalu et al., 2011), samples from Uttar Pradesh are more spread toward South Indians than Gujaratis are. According to a 2010 study by Chinese and American geneticists (Xing et al., 2010), Brahmins and Gujaratis show a closer relationship to Europeans while Dravidian-speaking tribals (Irulas from Andhra Pradesh) show a closer relationship to East Asians. Among Indian populations, the largest genetic distance is between Gujaratis and the tribal Irulas. A 2010 study by geneticists from Greece and New York (Paschou et al., 2010) analyzed genetic data from thousands of individuals and investigated human population structure by using Principal Component Analysis, and concluded that the world can be divided into five broad regions: (1) Africa, (2) Europe-Middle East-Central South Asia, (3) East Asia, (4) Oceania, and (5) America. Regarding Gujaratis, the study mentioned that "Gujarati Indians (GIH), originating from Gujarat (the most western state of India and immediately adjacent to Pakistan) are easily placed in Central South Asia where they are classified as Pakistanis". A 2009 study by geneticists from Massachusetts and Hyderabad (Reich et al., 2009) found high substructure in Gujarati Indian American (GIH) samples. One of the GIH subgroups fall outside the main gradient of Indian groups, suggesting that they harbor substantial ancestry that is not a simple mixture of ASI and ANI. A speculative hypothesisis that some Gujarati groups descend from the founders of the "Gurjara Pratihara" empire, which is thought to have been founded by Central Asian invaders in the 7th century A.D. and to have ruled parts of northwest India from the 7-12th centuries. I. Karve noted that endogamous groups with names like "Gurjar" are now distributed throughout the northwest of the subcontinent, and hypothesized that that they likely trace their names to this invading group.
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