Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

The Fundemantal difference is, you believe, there was a Historical, Legitimate, Indepdent Tamil Kingdom in SL in the North and East, thus, Today's Tamils are entitled to autonomy in N&E based on this Ancient Tamil Kingdom

I view and propose autonomy based on the current geo-political realities and conflict resolution prospective.

I do not use them to justify autonomy or a federal solution. That is why I purposely said that:

Therefore it is not appropriate to link the two statements by a 'thus'.

I also do not agree that when there is a dispute between two parties, one of the parties setting up yardsticks to define and measure 'legitimacy'. It should either be done by a neutral arbitrator or an acceptable world body.

In one hand, there is no point speaking about Veddas Culture since it is a culture common to any group of people relied on hunting.

On the other hand, Veddas culture is nothing but a sub-culture either of Sinhala or of Tamil, depend on which area they live.

The Vedda culture has been deeply affected by the government of Sri Lanka and may one day cease to exist. The few original Vedda that are still out there have changed dramatically. They no longer speak their native tongue and many other aspects of their lives have changed due to the laws they were forced to live under.

Today they are reduced to a few hundreds verging on extinction. Presently they are being evacuated from their traditional territories to agricultural land and very soon they would be an extinct ethnic group. Today, the identification of Veddas has become quite controversial for most of them have been absorbed into the main communities.

Veddas language, which is the most unique component of their culture is nothing but a dialect of Sinhalese (or of Tamil, again depending on the very factor).

As such, if there is anything that links Veddas to those Hela People or Balangoda Man, it is nothing but any genealogical traits they carry in their genes. Then again, the problem is how genetically pure Veddas are? Dr. Richard Lionel Spittel, the person who has conducted the most extensive research on Veddas, reported that the last Vedda with pure Vedi blood from both sides of his parentage died in early 1920s.

The Veddahs are the indigenous people of Ceylon... The character of the skull bear very striking resemblances to that of the Australian aboriginal, and interestingly enough, to that of the bushman, but as in so many other characters the closest affinities of the Veddahs are with the Australoid tribal people of central and southern India; craniologically there seems to be no difference between them whatsoever. In this connection it should be recalled that the island of Ceylon is merely a detached portion of the southern mainland of India.

Fa Hien-lena has yielded the earliest evidence (at ca. 37,000 BP) of anatomically modern man in South Asia 4 , followed by Batadomba-lena at 31,000 and 18,000, Beli-lena at 16,000, Fa Hien-lena at 6,900, Bellan-bandi Palassa at 6,500 and Fa Hien-lena again at 4,800 BP. These human remains have been subjected to detailed physical anthropological study and IT HAS BEEN AFFIRMED that the GENETIC CONTINUUM from at LEAST AS EARLY as 18,000 BP at Batadomba-lena to Beli-lena at 16,000 BP to Bellan-bandi Palassa at 6,500 BP to the recent VADDHA aboriginal population is REMARKABLY PRONOUNCED (ibid:486-9; Kennedy et al. 1987; Hawkey 1998; Kennedy 2000; the earlier material from Fa Hien-lena is too fragmentary for such comparative study).

Meanwhile, Balangoda Man continues to be a useful working concept, referring to the island's late Quaternary humans. He appears to have settled in practically very nook and corner of Sri Lanka ranging from the damp and cold High Plains such as Maha-eliya (Horton Plains) to the arid lowlands of Mannar and Vilpattu, to the steamy equatorial rainforests of Sabaragamuwa. The camps were invariably small, rarely exceeding 50sq.m in area, thus suggesting occupation by not more than a couple of nuclear families at most (id. 1992:351). THIS LIFE-STYLE COULD NOT HAVE BEEN TOO DIFFERENT FROM THAT DESCRIBED FOR THE VADDAS OF SRI LANKA, the Kadar, Malapantaram and Chenchus of India, the Andaman Islanders and the Semang of Malaysia (ibid.:412,451-7). They would have been moving from place to place on an annual cycle of foraging for food.

In conclusion, the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka were the Veddahs, who have had little admixture with the Sinhalese and possibly none with the Tamils. The Veddahs are distinct because they were confined to inhospitable dry zones and were hardly influenced by the neighboring inhabitants.

New DNA evidence suggests 'African Eve', the 150,000-year-old female ancestor of every person on Earth, may have lived in Tanzania or Ethiopia.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2909803.stm

Rodi people, like Vedda people, are a only a People Group, not a nation. There never was a Rodi Kingdom nor a Vedda Kingdom. From the antiquity, Veddas and Rodis were subjects of the Sinhalese Kingdom.

Having in mind that you call the Tamils as the desandants of Cholas,

Could you tell me who are the Sinhalese people, the genetic and physical profile of a typical Sinhalese?

Also would you enlighten me with the profile of the Rodi people.