Tag: Tibet

Yamnaya-like Chemurchek links Afanasievo with Iron Age Tocharians

late-bronze-age-mongolia-tarim-china

New preprint by the Jena-Reich labs, The Genomic Formation of Human Populations in East Asia, by Wang et al. bioRxiv (2020).

Interesting excerpts (emphasis mine):

Mongolia Neolithic cluster

The three most ancient individuals of the Mongolia ‘East’ cluster are from the Kherlen River region of eastern Mongolia (Tamsag-Bulag culture) and date to 6000-4300 BCE (this places them in the Early Neolithic period, which in Northeast Asia is defined by the use of pottery and not by agriculture). These individuals are genetically similar to previously reported Neolithic individuals from the cis-Baikal region and have minimal evidence of West Eurasian-related admixture

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Proto-Tocharians: From Afanasievo to the Tarim Basin through the Tian Shan

tocharians-early-eneolithic

A reader commented recently that there is little information about Indo-Europeans from Central and East Asia in this blog. Regardless of the scarce archaeological data compared to European prehistory, I think it is premature to write anything detailed about population movements of Indo-Iranians in Asia, especially now that we are awaiting the updates of Narasimhan et al (2018).

Furthermore, there was little hope that Tocharians would be different than neighbouring Andronovo-like populations (see a recent post on my predicted varied admixture of Common Tocharians), so the history of both unrelated Late PIE languages would have had to be … Read the rest “Proto-Tocharians: From Afanasievo to the Tarim Basin through the Tian Shan”

Reconstruction of Y-DNA phylogeny helps also reconstruct Tibeto-Burman expansion

tibeto-burman-han-chinese-population

New paper (behind paywall) Reconstruction of Y-chromosome phylogeny reveals two neolithic expansions of Tibeto-Burman populations by Wang et al. Mol Genet Genomics (2018).

Interesting excerpts:

Archeological studies suggest that a subgroup of ancient populations of the Miaodigou culture (~ 6300–5500 BP) moved westward to the upper stream region of the Yellow River and created the Majiayao culture (~ 5400–4900 BP) (Liu et al. 2010), which was proposed to be the remains of direct ancestors of Tibeto-Burman populations (Sagart 2008). On the other hand, Han populations, the other major descendant group of the Yang-Shao culture (~ 7000–5500 BP), are composed of

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Demographic history and genetic adaptation in the Himalayan region

Open access Demographic history and genetic adaptation in the Himalayan region inferred from genome-wide SNP genotypes of 49 populations, by Arciero et al. Mol. Biol. Evol (2018), accepted manuscript (msy094).

Abstract (emphasis mine):

We genotyped 738 individuals belonging to 49 populations from Nepal, Bhutan, North India or Tibet at over 500,000 SNPs, and analysed the genotypes in the context of available worldwide population data in order to investigate the demographic history of the region and the genetic adaptations to the harsh environment. The Himalayan populations resembled other South and East Asians, but in addition displayed their own specific

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