Cowboys and Indians

The myth of Indian provenance for the Shroud of Turin

The latest paper on Shroud DNA triggered a mass of newspaper headlines to the effect that the Shroud could have originated in India, in spite of it’s clearly saying that the Indian DNA claimed to be present in a previous study could not be verified. What’s going on?

Here is the quote from the latest paper – Barcaccia 2026¹ – which stimulated the popular press:

“In that study, over 55.6% of the human mtDNA HVS-I reads were classified into Near Eastern lineages, while Western European lineages accounted for less than 5.6%. The presence of approximately 38.7% of Indian ethnic lineages could have resulted from historical interactions or the Romans importing linen from regions near the Indus Valley, associated with the term “Hindoyin” found in rabbinic texts.”

Note the words “in that study.” This paper is referring to a previous one – Barcaccia 2015² – not to data from the most recent researches.

So what was the finding of the previous study?

“Among the 93 mtDNA amplicons generated and sequenced, a large number of different human sequences corresponding to three distinct mtDNA loci (MT-DLOOP, MT-CO1, MT-ND5) were identified. This result not only indicates that human DNA was indeed unequivocally present in the dust from TS but also that the sources of human DNA could be ascribed to numerous individuals (Table 2). In fact, the mtDNA haplotypes were found to belong to different branches of the human mtDNA tree (Supplementary Table S2), even after having excluded all the mtDNA sequences that could be theoretically attributed to operator contamination (Supplementary Table S3).”

Table 2 lists 38 individual DNA identities (although some of them could be the same person), and Supplementary Table 2 lists 15 different haplogroups derived from these identities.

Various studies have attempted to identify a) where and when these haplogroups emerged, and b) where most of the representatives of those haplogroups are now. Unfortunately, neither of them is particularly informative about the Shroud. For example, one of the 38 bore Haplotype R8. This is considered very rare, and to have originated roughly in the place where it is most concentrated today, which is in the Indian State of Odisha, on the East Coast of India just south of Kolkata, where about 10% of the 40 million population have it. In the whole of India, about 0.1% of the population has it.³

Can we conclude, as it seems the popular press would like to conclude, that someone from Odisha, or even someone in Odisha, has handled the Shroud? Of course not. If the analysis is accurate (and this is by no means confirmed, given that it could not be verified ten years later), then it would mean either that someone from Odisha was in contact with the Shroud, or someone whose mother, or grandmother, or great-grandmother back for hundreds of generations, was from Odisha. And the same goes for all the other haplotypes as well.

Haplogroup R8 is distinguished by a few specific mutations, which have been reported in various papers. e.g.
— ‘Deep Rooting In-Situ Expansion of mtDNA Haplogroup R8 in South Asia’ ³
“The R8 haplogroup is defined by 13215–9449–7759–3384–2755 sites in the coding regions and single site (195) in the control region.”
— Haplogrep Phylogenies (rCRS) Phylogeny 17.2, Haplogroup R8 ⁴
“This haplogroup is defined by the following 17 mutations: 73G, 195C, 263G, 750G, 1438G, 2706G, 2755G, 3384G, 4769G, 7028T, 7759C, 8860G, 9449T, 11719A, 13215C, 14766T, 15326G”
— Haplogrep Phylogenies (rCRS) Phylogeny 17.2, Haplogroup R8a1 ⁴
“This haplogroup is defined by the following 22 mutations: 73G, 195C, 263G, 709A, 750G, 1438G, 2706G, 2755G, 3384G, 4769G, 5510G, 5911T, 7028T, 7759C, 8860G, 9449T, 11719A, 13215C, 13782T, 14766T, 15326G!, 15326G”
— ianlogan.co.uk, Genetic sequences for R8. ⁵
Lists 56 individual sequences from sub-haplogroups R8a1, R8a1a, R8a1a1, R8a1a1a1, R8a1a1a1a, R8a1a1a2, R8a1a1b, R8a1a1c, R8a1a1d, R8a1a2, R8a1a2a, R8a1a3, R8a-T16093C, R8a1b, R8a2 and R8a3. They all have 2755G, 3384G, 7759C, 9449T, and 13215C.

Barcaccia’s 2015 paper refers to four R8a1 individuals by two mutations each, 13630G & 13782T, 13751C & 13782T, 13578A & 13782T, and 13767G & 13782T. The second of each group does appear in the ianlogan.co.uk sequences above, and on the Haplogrep mutations list for R8a1, but the first appears on none of them, nor any of the other sources. In fact 13630G only appears in haplogroup U5b2b (associated with Northern Europe)⁶, but the other three don’t seem to be mentioned in the literature at all.

In his 2026 paper, Barcaccia does not identify 13782T at all, and of the first of each of his 2015 pairs, only 13758A is identified, but not in connection with any R8 lineage. It is part of the alleged H33 mutation set, although none of the sources listed above include it in H33.

This is confusing. Other haplogroups associated with India in 2015 were M39, M56 and R7. It is not surprising that in 2026, Barcaccia reported, “it was not possible to reconstruct complete mitogenome haplotypes that could be confidently classified into any of the South Asian minor lineages (e.g., M39, M56, R7, and R8) identified in our previous study.

Returning to the initial quote above, and the passage, “In that [2015] study, […] Western European lineages accounted for less than 5.6%.” I think this is a mistake derived from misprint (5.6% instead of 56%, as explained below.

Humans, and their mitochondrial DNA arrived in Eurasia from Africa about 70,000 years ago, settling in the Fertile Crescent before spreading out into Europe and Asia. The African Haplogroup L3 mutated into various types, firstly M (which spread mainly eastwards and diversified into many M- subgroups) and also N, which diversified into R, which in turn gave rise to the major European lineage H about 20,000 years ago. This in turn produced H1, H2 and so on through to H100 and more. They predominantly seem to have emerged in south east Europe or the Caucasus, and either remained there or diversified northwards as the last Ice Age receded. Of his 38 individuals, Barcaccia (2015) identified two individuals with H1, eight of H2, two of H3, one of H4, three of H13 and five of H33. All of them (55% of the total) are predominantly found in Europe today. If the eleven individuals classified as M, R and U were considered Indian, then they would constitute about 29% of the total, leaving the four group R0 (11%) – Arabian, and two group L (5%) – African. In fact, because of the very poor correlation between the 2015 and the 2026 results, I don’t think any of these percentages are meaningful, let alone significant.

The findings reported in the latest paper contain nothing that connect any of them to India except for a couple of rather forlorn statements that “stinging nettle, native to Europe and widely distributed across Asia and North Africa, is valued both as a vegetable and in traditional Indian medicine” and “oranges, which are originally from the region encompassing Southern China and North-Eastern India…” In truth, attempts to link historical records of ancient, medieval and modern trade links between Europe and India to the Shroud of Turin are not supported by anything discovered by Gianni Barcaccia and his team.

Not that any in-depth study of anything bothers newspapers…

— New York Post, 31 March 2026: “Surprising DNA analysis reveals where Shroud of Turin may have actually originated.” “Analysis has revealed DNA belonging to plants, animals and even people of Indian descent on the Shroud of Turin.”
— Vatican News: 1 April 2026: “New DNA research confirms Shroud of Turin’s passage through the Middle East.”
— Ancient-Origins.net, 1 April 2026: “Shroud of Turin DNA Analysis Reveals Shocking Indian Origins.”
—The Times of India, 2 April 2026: “Could the Shroud of Turin have been woven in India? New DNA study hints at a surprising link.”
— The Australia Today, 2 April 2026: “New DNA study ties Shroud of Turin to India, adding fresh twist to ancient mystery.”
— The Independent, 8 April 2026: “DNA analysis of Shroud of Turin reveals new detail about artefact’s origin.” “Yarn used to make the Shroud of Turin may have likely come from ancient India’s Indus Valley region, according to a new DNA analysis of samples from the linen fabric believed to have been used to wrap Jesus’s crucified body.”
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1). Gianni Barcaccia et al., ‘DNA Traces on the Shroud of Turin: Metagenomics of the 1978 Official Sample Collection,’ BioRχiv, 2026

2). Gianni Barcaccia et al., ‘Uncovering the Sources of DNA found on the Turin Shroud,’ Scientific Reports, 2015.

3). Kumarasamy Thangaraj et al., ‘Deep Rooting In-Situ Expansion of mtDNA Haplogroup R8 in South Asia,’ PLoS One, 2009

4). Haplogrep 3: Free mtDNA Haplogroup Classification Service, at haplogrep.i-med.ac.at.
Specifically haplogrep.i-med.ac.at/phylogenies/phylotree-rcrs@17.2/haplogroups/R8
and haplogrep.i-med.ac.at/phylogenies/phylotree-rcrs@17.2/haplogroups/R8a1

5). ianlogan.co.uk.
Specifically ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/r8_genbank_sequences.htm

6). ianlogan.co.uk.
Specifically ianlogan.co.uk/sequences_by_group/u5b2b_genbank_sequences.htm