Prehistorical East-West admixture of maternal lineages in a 2,500-year-old population in Xinjiang.
As an area of contact between Asia and Europe, Central Asia witnessed a scenario of complex cultural developments, extensive migratory movements, and biological admixture between West and East Eurasians. However, the detanglement of this complexity of diversity requires an understanding of prehistoric contacts of the people from the West and the East on the Eurasia continent. We demonstrated the presence of genetic admixture of West and East in a population of 35 inhabitants excavated in Gavaerk in southern Xinjiang and dated 2,800-2,100 years before present by analyzing their mitochondrial DNA variations. This result indicates that the initial contact of the East and the West Eurasians occurred further east than Central Asia as early as 2,500 years ago.
Zhang
Fan
F
State Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering and MOE Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, School of Life Sciences and Institutes of Biomedical Sciences, Fudan University, 200433 Shanghai, China.
Xu
Zhi
Z
Tan
Jingze
J
Sun
Yuefeng
Y
Xu
Bosong
B
Li
Shilin
S
Zhao
Xin
X
Zhou
Hui
H
Gong
Guoqiang
G
Zhang
Jun
J
Jin
Li
L
D002681:China; D022801:Complementarity Determining Regions; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial / Q000235:genetics*; D005828:Genetics, Population; D005843:Geography; D049690:History, Ancient; D006801:Humans; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010163:Paleontology / Q000379:methods; D010802:Phylogeny; D014070:Tooth / Q000737:chemistry
D022801:Complementarity Determining Regions; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial