title: Afghanistan's ethnic groups share a Y-chromosomal heritage structured by historical events.
abstract: Afghanistan has held a strategic position throughout history. It has been inhabited since the Paleolithic and later became a crossroad for expanding civilizations and empires. Afghanistan's location, history, and diverse ethnic groups present a unique opportunity to explore how nations and ethnic groups emerged, and how major cultural evolutions and technological developments in human history have influenced modern population structures. In this study we have analyzed, for the first time, the four major ethnic groups in present-day Afghanistan: Hazara, Pashtun, Tajik, and Uzbek, using 52 binary markers and 19 short tandem repeats on the non-recombinant segment of the Y-chromosome. A total of 204 Afghan samples were investigated along with more than 8,500 samples from surrounding populations important to Afghanistan's history through migrations and conquests, including Iranians, Greeks, Indians, Middle Easterners, East Europeans, and East Asians. Our results suggest that all current Afghans largely share a heritage derived from a common unstructured ancestral population that could have emerged during the Neolithic revolution and the formation of the first farming communities. Our results also indicate that inter-Afghan differentiation started during the Bronze Age, probably driven by the formation of the first civilizations in the region. Later migrations and invasions into the region have been assimilated differentially among the ethnic groups, increasing inter-population genetic differences, and giving the Afghans a unique genetic diversity in Central Asia.
authors.affiliation: The Lebanese American University, Chouran, Beirut, Lebanon.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Haber
authors.forename: Daniel E
authors.initials: DE
authors.lastname: Platt
authors.forename: Maziar
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ashrafian Bonab
authors.forename: Sonia C
authors.initials: SC
authors.lastname: Youhanna
authors.forename: David F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Soria-Hernanz
authors.forename: Begoña
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Martínez-Cruz
authors.forename: Bouchra
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Douaihy
authors.forename: Michella
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghassibe-Sabbagh
authors.forename: Hoshang
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Rafatpanah
authors.forename: Mohsen
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Ghanbari
authors.forename: John
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Whale
authors.forename: Oleg
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Balanovsky
authors.forename: R Spencer
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Wells
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Comas
authors.forename: Chris
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Tyler-Smith
authors.forename: Pierre A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Zalloua
mesh_terms: D000346:Afghanistan / Q000208:ethnology; D041322:Chromosomes, Human, Y / Q000235:genetics*; D005006:Ethnicity / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D025341:Principal Component Analysis