American blogger suspects Y haplotype T represents the African genetic element in the Dravidians.
Excerpts below
"{The Case For Y-DNA haplogroup T as a Dravidian leadership group marker
So, is there any way that the cultural evidence and the genetic evidence can be reconciled? It turns out that there is a way.
Y-DNA haplotype T is a particularly plausible candidate for this transmission.
Y-DNA haplotype T is most common in the pre-Aryan Dravidian area of India. For example, more than 22% of Telagu speaking men in India have this Y-DNA haplotype, and in some South Asian populations it exceeds 50%. This percentage is on the same order of magnitude as, but somewhat lower than, the genetic contribution of the formative Indo-Aryan population in parts of South Asia that were never Dravidian, as expected from a population that is believed to have arrived in India somewhat earlier.
Y-DNA haplotype T is also virtually absent from the areas associated with strong Indo-Aryan influences, so its presence in South Asia isn't likely to be a result of admixture of Sumerian and Harappan populations in connection with their long trade associations with each other by sea and possibly also by land. Matrilineally inherited mtDNA evidence also supports this conclusion:
West Eurasian mtDNA haplogroups H, JT and W represent 6–7% of north and central tribes, which are located in the area where Indo-European languages are spoken. In contrast, these west Eurasian mtDNA types are virtually absent in south tribes, which are located where Dravidian languages are spoken. This might reflect different responses of local people to the Indo-European settlement of India. In the north and center, Indo-Europeans may have admixed with local people, concomitant with the spread of Indo-European languages. In contrast, in the southern part of India, local populations may have challenged the arrival of Indo-European newcomers, resulting in limited admixture, reduction of tribal population sizes and retention of their original languages, thus explaining why Dravidian languages survived the spread of Indo-European languages in south India.
Tibeto-Burman language speakers in South Asian tribes have strong East Asian genetic as well as linguistic affinities in both mtDNA and Y-DNA which are found nowhere else in South Asia, suggesting that "these populations remained relatively isolated....."
"The populations in South India where Y-DNA haplotype T is most prevalent coincide strongly with the linguistically inferred proto-Dravidian homeland within India. See also here.
Type T is also one of the few Y-DNA haplotypes not of the E type that are found in a Fulani population of West Africa, where about one in six Fulani men in Cameroon are currently of that type, and the Fulani speak a Niger-Congo language family language quite close linguistically to the proto-Dravidian language.
The Y-DNA T haplotype is also found in the Horn of Africa, in the Nile River basin, in the Fertile Crescent and in low frequencies in places where the non-Atlantic part of the Neolithic expansion took place. In the Nile River basin proper, Y-DNA haplotype T is most common in Upper Egypt and Sudan.
Sergent makes the observation, and I offer it for what it's worth, which may not be very much, that "the resemblances among Nubians, proto-dynastic Egyptians, Dravidians and what was formerly called "Hamites" appear henceforth through multivaried cranial measurements "as being very evident," and that among the so-called "Hamites" (in reality of the kushitic languages, that is to say the linguistic family called semito-hamite), the Somalis and Galla are black-skinned, it is probable that the Dravidians have conserved their color on leaving Africa; their installation in the Indian tropical zone could have subsequently only confirmed and augmented this pigmentation...."
{ One plausible scenario is that mutations that distinguish Y-DNA haplotype T from its direct ancestor Y-DNA haplotype K, are part of the migration out of a "Eurasian Eden" (probably South Asia or Persian) into the Fertile Cresent that also brings Y-DNA haplotype R1 with it, probably prior to the Neolithic Revolution.
When agriculture arrives from the Fertile Cresent in Egypt, where it arrived before it did anywhere else but the Fertile Cresent and the Indus River Valley, men with Y-DNA haplotype T settle in the Nile River Valley and become part of the core population of the agricultural era of the Nile River Valley. Other men from the Fertile Cresent with Y-DNA haplotype T are part of the population that brings agriculture to Europe in the LBK population that brings agriculture to Eastern and Central Europe.
Sometime later, a group of Y-DNA haplotype T Egyptians continue towards the source of the Nile, which splits in two directions, the Blue Nile makes its way East to Ethiopia. The other branch extends to the West until it reaches the divide between the Lake Chad inland basin, and the Nile River basin. An exploring group on foot looking for the source of the Nile and forking to the West would easily end up in the Chad Basin and from there to the home of the Fulani in the Sahel, where the crops that make their way to India have their origins.
Another group of men, with Y-DNA haplotype R1b1a (also known as R1b-V88) is also found primarily in North Cameroon, where it is spoken mostly by Chadic language speakers. The relatively undiluted mix of Y-DNA haplotypes of these men, compared to those with Y-DNA haplotype T suggests that the haplotype T group arrived long before the R1b-V88 group did.
In the Sahel these Y-DNA haplotype T men learn Sahel agriculture (the only kind of agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa until the Bantu people develop tropical agriculture many years later), and adopt a Niger-Congo family language. The Sahel crops have origins on the opposite sides of the Sahel and Y-DNA haplotype T is not widespread in sub-Saharan Africa, so they are unlikely to have domesticated these crops themselves. Trade conducted by the Mesopotamian or Egyptians with the Harappans brings them the discovery that there is some place suitable for Sahel crops in South Asia which can be reached by ship. These men set out up the Nile Valley to Egypt with their crops to Mesopotamia to South India, or alternately to the Horn of Africa to South India. One of these possibilities seems most likely.
It isn't clear if the Y-DNA haplotype T in Ethiopia and Somolia and Tanzania has its origins from Egyptian sea traders migrating inland, or from people moving up the Nile and taking the Blue Nile fork rather than the White Nile fork and head East as well as West. Either way, Sahel farmers in Ethiopia could bring crops and culture, as well as their Y-DNA haplotype T from Ethiopia to South Asia by boat.
But, a Fulani source seems more likely than an Ethopian one, because otherwise it is hard to explain why the men bringing Sahel crops to South Asia would speak a Niger-Congo language, although this could have been the language of the region prior to an influx of Afro-Asiatic languages from Egypt and the Middle East. The Kordofanians (who have a relatively high frequency of Y-DNA haplotype T) may be a relict population that is the most direct linguistic and cultural descendant of the East African Niger-Congo language speaking population, something supported by the fact that they are believed to be the oldest layer of people in the Nuba Mountain area of Sudan which has been a refugium for many layers of peoples over past millenia.
Also, Sahel crops may have come relatively late to East Africa: "Wiegboldus (1996) found no evidence of millet and bicolour sorghum being cultivated in East African countries until late antiquity, millennia after African millets were being cultivated in the Sahara, West Africa" and in South Asia . . . Wigboldus,J.S. (1996). Early presence of African millets near the Indian Ocean. In J. Reade, The Indian Ocean (pp.75-86), London: The British Museum."
A third possibility is that the Fulani or a kindred people with high levels of Y-DNA T traded back and forth all the way to the West African coast and took a boat from there, but there is considerably less evidence of sea trade reaching that far around 2500 BCE. "}
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