[monetus]

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India

Seems like the British systems formed and formalized it, but that that itself was an amalgam of the cultural stratification that was sometimes already there. Multiculturalism turned monstrous... sad.

[rendall]

> Seems like the British systems formed and formalized it

Here is an extremely harsh critique of that perspective, from an upper-caste scholar of Indian history

https://thewire.in/caste/caste-history-postcolonial-studies

[ch4s3]

There have been a number of genetic studies[1] that can identify caste heredity going back to almost the time of the Vedas showing VERY little genetic mixing between the castes.

[1] https://hms.harvard.edu/news/genetic-study-finds-caste-syste...

[monetus]

I think the link through in that article is sadly dead, but I still found it.

Wow, that is less intermingling than I would have guessed. I knew that caste had been there for ages, but it is still a bit astonishing to read that.

[ch4s3]

Oops, I may have chopped off a few characters. Yeah there were essentially only a handful of upper caste men gathering children with lower caste women and virtually no other mixing for thousands of years.