Evidence that a West-East admixed population lived in the Tarim Basin as early as the early Bronze Age

BMC Biology

Research Article

Quanchao Zhang¹  Hong Zhu¹  Dawei Cai¹  Hui Zhou²  Yinqiu Cui²  Chunxiang Li²  Hongjie Li³  Chengzhi Xie³  Victor H Mair⁴  Li Jin⁴  Zhi Xu⁵  Wenying Li⁶  Idelisi Abuduresule⁶ 

[1] Ancient DNA Laboratory, Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology, Jilin University, 130012, Changchun, PR China;Ancient DNA Laboratory, Research Center for Chinese Frontier Archaeology, Jilin University, 130012, Changchun, PR China;College of Life Science, Jilin University, 130023, Changchun, PR China;College of Life Science, Jilin University, 130023, Changchun, PR China;Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania, 19104, Philadelphia, PA, USA;Key Laboratory of Genetic Engineering and Center for Anthropological Studies, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, 200433, Shanghai, PR China;Xinjiang Cultural Relics and Archaeology Institute, 830000, Ürümchi, PR China;

关键词: Tarim Basin;    Human Remains;    Admix Population;    Chromosome Haplogroup;    Ancient Silk Road;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1741-7007-8-15

 received in 2009-09-21, accepted in 2010-02-17,  发布年份 2010

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe Tarim Basin, located on the ancient Silk Road, played a very important role in the history of human migration and cultural communications between the West and the East. However, both the exact period at which the relevant events occurred and the origins of the people in the area remain very obscure. In this paper, we present data from the analyses of both Y chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) derived from human remains excavated from the Xiaohe cemetery, the oldest archeological site with human remains discovered in the Tarim Basin thus far.ResultsMitochondrial DNA analysis showed that the Xiaohe people carried both the East Eurasian haplogroup (C) and the West Eurasian haplogroups (H and K), whereas Y chromosomal DNA analysis revealed only the West Eurasian haplogroup R1a1a in the male individuals.ConclusionOur results demonstrated that the Xiaohe people were an admixture from populations originating from both the West and the East, implying that the Tarim Basin had been occupied by an admixed population since the early Bronze Age. To our knowledge, this is the earliest genetic evidence of an admixed population settled in the Tarim Basin.

【 授权许可】

Unknown   
© Li et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2010. This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.