Quote:
ASI ancestry among the Indian samples in this study is represented by the South Asian, Oceanian and East Asian components. But these three components make up 90-100% of the genetic structure of the Indians. This leaves almost no room for ANI, unless a large part of the South Asian component shared by the Indian samples is in fact ANI.
What this suggests is that the Mal'ta South Asian component is 100% ANI, of the same type that is seen in West Asia and Europe today. This makes sense considering that archeologically the Mal'ta site shows links to European sites where ASI was unlikely to have been present before the Ice Age, and where it's not present today.
The Mal'ta population had archeological and genetic ties with people who were the ancestors of present day Europeans and West Asians, and they passed on their South Asian-like and Oceanian-like admixture to them. So if this is ASI, it's not the same ASI as in South Asia today.
South Asians are more drifted than West Asians and Europeans, so some of the ancestry they share with these groups gets lumped into a South Asian-specific cluster which has nothing to do with the component we know as Ancestral South Asian (ASI).
