Thanks to DNA, wrongly accused man released after 37 years in Florida jail, some of those years on death row

A Florida man who spent the last 37 years in prison on a rape and murder charge was released Thursday, hours after officials revealed dramatic new evidence that proved his innocence.

Robert DuBoise walked out of the Hardee Correctional Institution in Bowling Green, Florida, shortly after 2 p.m. With him were his mother and sister.

“It’s an overwhelming sense of relief,” Robert DuBoise told reporters outside the prison. “I prayed to God every day and hoped for it.”

The 56-year-old was serving a life sentence, having been convicted in 1983 for the murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams. She had been raped and beaten while walking home from her job at a Tampa mall.

Read the story using the link below:

https://www.winknews.com/2020/08/28/innocent-florida-inmate-released-after-37-years/

Ancestral South Indians ASI and Ancestral North Indians ANI

The past belief that Dravidians inhabited India and were chased away to the South by Aryans who came from the North is no longer sustainable. The genetics of Indians is far more complex and in its simplest form can be expressed as a mixture of Ancestral South Indians ASI and Ancestral North Indians ANI in differing proportions. The ASI and ANI were themselves mixtures of other populations. The following article is a MUST READ for anyone who is interested in how genetics has discovered who Indians really are. Alternately, read my book for more details!!!

https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/vagheesh/files/eaat7487.full_.pdf

History of Khazan land management in Goa: ecological, economic and political perspective by Prof. Nandkumar Kamat

My ancestors, the Prabhu clan, were invited to initiate the 4th vangad of Aldona's gaunkari system (comunidade) because of their expertise in reclaiming land and building sluice gates. The following excellent paper by Goa University Professor Nandkumar Kamat explains in clear language and terminology everything we need to know on Khazan (or Khajan) land. This article is a must read for every Goan and everyone else who is interested in Goa's history:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/283475605_History_of_Khazan_land_management_in_Goa_ecological_economic_and_political_perspective

The Pre-historic People of Goa's Usgalimal: Ancient Ancestral South Indians

The Pre-historic People of Usgalimal

Outside the Goan village of Usgalimal, on the banks of the river Kushavati, local villagers were always aware of the existence of petroglyphs or rock art comprising more than 100 images including of bulls and humans carved on laterite stone. In 1993, the locals revealed these petroglyphs to archaeologists and the site has since become a tourist destination

(Thermistocles D’Silva, https://goaprehistory.files.wordpress.com/2018/09/rock-art-at-usgalimal-goa.pdf;

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usgalimal_rock_engravings).

According to the Indian Archaeological Society, these engravings are 20’000 to 30’000 years old. I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to witness the engravings personally but plan to do so the next time I visit Goa. Rock art can be found in many parts of the world; in India, paintings on the walls of caves have been found in Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Bihar and Uttarakhand (https://www.openart.in/history/rock-art-from-india/).

Who were the people living in Usgalimal more than 20’000 years before present (ybp)? Genetics provides a clue about who these inhabitants could be.

David Reich, V. S. Shinde and other researchers have shown (Narasimhan et al., The Genomic Formation of South and Central Asia, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6457/eaat7487) that the Indian population consists of a mixture of Ancestral South Indians ASI and Ancestral North Indians ANI in varying proportions. The ASI who created the Indus Valley Civilisation - starting around 7000 ybp - arose when Iranians from the Zagros mountains migrated to the region and mixed with the local population tagged as Ancient Ancestral South Indians AASI. It is these AASI or a population closely related to them, therefore, who inhabited Usgalimal 20’000 ybp and have left behind their art for posterity.

Genetic studies carried out by Harvard professor Reich have linked the AASI to the Onge, an ethnic group of the Andaman Islands. Along with the Great Andamanese, the Jarawas, the Shompen, the Nicobarese and the Sentinelese, the Onge are one of the six native and often reclusive peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and are classified as belonging to the Negrito family. It is possible that the other five are also linked to the AASI but their genetic ancestry is not known.

These people are hunter gatherers, adept at using the bow and arrow. The Sentinelese are particularly intriguing because very little is known about them. They are protected by the Government of India and the island is off limits even for the Indian navy for fear that any close contacts with outsiders may infect the tribe with disease and wipe out the few remaining Sentinelese (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/worldnews/7795188/worlds-most-ruthless-tribe-that-killed-us-tourist-and-anyone-who-approaches-their-island-love-having-beach-orgies/). And yet, the Sentinelese may be able to provide clues as to how the people of Usgalimal lived their lives, their culture, their food, their sexual habits and rituals or their art.

Review on Amazon.com by Michael Fonseca

https://www.facebook.com/michael.fonseca.102361/posts/120546569668103

Michael Fonseca

15 hrs · 

Bernardo's book (The last Prabhu) is well written. Here is my take (on Amazon review a couple of days ago).

I believe that this book will be used as a reference and guide for years to come. Bernardo has used his scientific background to succinctly walk the reader through the science of DNA for laymen like myself. In this book, the author has used quantitative research, however due to his love for history and tertiary interests, he has combined qualitative and mixed methods to provide another lens of history. Some of the narratives make me reminisce the times I spent in Goa. There are numerous facts regarding the upheavals in Goa and village life that makes the reader want to learn more. I for one will try to find the communidade details of my family from the various villages in Goa.

Whist our ancestors meandered with purpose through Africa, Europe and Asia, I was always proud that I could identify myself as a Goan for at least 6 generations. Even though my great grandfather lived most of his life in Ahmedabad, his siblings in Pune and East Africa and his descendants in Bombay, his relatives and other family in Karachi, Calcutta and some mofussil areas in and around central India, yet we all call ourselves Goans. Now on Gedmatch and 23&me I see that I have more cousins from Mangalore rather than from Goa. For the last couple of generations we (Goans) have migrated to New Zealand, Canada and so many places in between. We are now marrying way outside our ancestors wildest imaginations. With the magic of the internet and various ancestry websites, there is a great interest to find one's roots, know who you are and make connections. And to me this is the significance and importance of this book. As the field of genetics takes giant steps forward, as it must, I am eagerly looking forward to the 3rd edition.

Review of The Last Prabhu by Dr. Sandra Fonseca

This review was published of 24 May 2020 on Goanet Reader. Many thanks to Dr. Sandra Fonseca for her insightful review and the enormous amount of time she has invested to meticulously read and analyse The Last Prabhu.

The Last Prabhu, A Hunt for roots: DNA, ancient documents
and migration in Goa
Second Revised Edition
Bernardo Elvino de Sousa
--
Review by Dr Sandra Fonseca
sfons073@uottawa.ca

"Undra mojea mama, ani aum sangtam tuca...  ani mazorechea
piliean taca eka gansan khailo." These are words of a
popular, well-loved Goan song, sung even today at every Goan
get-together.  Yet many Goans probably don't dwell on the
meaning and significance of the words of the song.  In his
well-researched 2020 scientific treatise, "The Last Prabhu, A
Hunt for roots: DNA, ancient documents and migration in Goa",
the author Dr Bernardo Elvino de Sousa sheds light on the
meaning of this song, explaining how and why the Portuguese
conquerors were able to capture Goa.

          The author traces the history of his ancestors
          through a multidisciplinary approach utilising
          revolutionary developments in genetics, deep
          ancestry DNA test results, written documentary
          evidence and orally transmitted history.

With his amazing skill in deciphering scripts and translating
languages -- Konkani, Marathi and Portuguese, de Sousa puts
together pieces of the puzzle of the peopling of Goa and
India in painstaking, precise detail.

In a personal search for his own ancestral roots in the
village of Aldona (in Bardez, Goa), de Sousa provides a
glimpse into the migratory paths and the history of the life
of people in the villages of Goa in the late 16th and early
17th century.  The book also reveals the origins of the
church and the circumstances around conversions to
Christianity, the condition of women, and the caste system.

Although de Sousa explains the complexity of DNA in plain,
simple terms using analogies and examples in his multifaceted
book written through the lens of history, geography,
literature and science, it is a book that requires several
re-reads as the readers are taken on a mind-boggling
chronological journey of migration patterns of early Goan
settlers, an analysis of haplogroups and mitochondrial DNA
and the realities of the life and death decisions made under
the Portuguese rule of Goa.

Based on scientific evidence, de Sousa traces his ancestry to
the Indus Valley Civilisation population as well as the
Yamnaya and Sintashta cultures in the Steppes that migrated
through the Fertile Crescent to Goa around 700 BCE.

de Sousa also demonstrates that "all Indians irrespective of
their caste consist of ANI [Ancestral North Indian] and ASI
[Ancestral South Indian] mixtures in different proportions
belonging to different haplogroups, resulting from ancestors
who migrated out of Africa through different routes and
different epochs." (p.128).

          In his search to understand how the people of Goa
          were so easily conquered and ruled by foreign
          invaders, de Sousa uncovers the covert help given
          by the Hindus to the Portuguese to avoid the
          excessive tax demands of Adil Shahi that sounded
          the death knell for Goa.  In the process, de Sousa
          discovers that his ancestors were self-governing,
          skilled, sophisticated, literate in Sanskrit,
          experienced agriculturalists, environmentalists --
          a people resilient in the face of enormous
          challenges and limited choices offered by their
          conquerors.

In a rendering of the truth, while de Sousa describes the
brutality of the Portuguese conquerors, the forced
conversions to Christianity, explaining how "the fury of the
Inquisition spared no one -- women, children nor the
deceased" (p.163), he also sheds light on other uncomfortable
truths such as the deplorable condition of Brahmin women
under a dominant patriarchal system and the rigidity of the
caste system.

Meetings in the 1600s

The descriptions of the meetings recorded in the Tombo de
Aldona are detailed and vivid transporting the reader back to
the 1600s where one can visualize the meetings that took
place under the shade of a banyan tree in the village of
Aldona.  For any Goan interested in tracing their ancestral
roots, the book offers details on pre-conversion ancestral
Hindu names, vangads, and gotras and a fascinating account of
the efficient functioning of the gaunkari system and the
comunidades.

At a broader level, the book is a story of migration
triggered by climatic changes and a quest of human survival,
a quintessential story of human migration.  de Sousa reveals
how historically migrants have brought expertise, new ideas
and skills that foster innovation and progress and history
has demonstrated time and again that those countries that
recognize and utilize this tremendous human capital will
flourish and thrive. de Sousa offers important cautionary
lessons here for nations and peoples about the need to
embrace new ideas and innovation to prosper.

Goa, not the same

          As de Sousa relates, "Goa of today is not the same
          as Goa of the past and will not be the Goa of the
          future." (p.175).  He states that the fast pace and
          rate of change with emigration to Goa is inevitable
          unless living conditions in other places also
          improve.  This sentiment is echoed in the reasons
          for migration around the world as people are forced
          to leave their homes seeking refuge, stability and
          better lives.

To persevere in the writing of this book despite so much of
the evidence being lost and fragmented is a commendable feat
by the author.

In the search for his descendants and in tracing his
ancestral roots that lead de Sousa to his identity as a
descendant of Ramu Prabhu and to "The Last Prabhu", he
provides a glimpse of a rich history of the peopling of Goa
that is a story of a people with a strong intellect and
tremendous resilience who survived oppression and fought for
self-preservation against great odds. It is a great gift
that future generations of Goans can add and build upon.

I would encourage the reader to reach out to the author at
his blog http://thelastprabhu.blogspot.com with any questions
or to leave a comment.

[The ebook version is available at amazon.com]
--
Goanet Reader is compiled and edited by Frederick Noronha
WhatsApp +91-9822122436.

Modelling predicts that specific HLA alleles respond better to Covid-19 than other alleles.

Modelling predicts that our Human Leukocyte antigen HLA system has an influence on our immune response to Covid-19, depending on the HLA allele of the person.

https://theconversation.com/your-genes-could-determine-whether-the-coronavirus-puts-you-in-the-hospital-and-were-starting-to-unravel-which-ones-matter-137145