AsianScientist (Oct. 17, 2017) – The biological makeup of humans in East Asia is more complex and diverse than previously thought, according to a new study in Current Biology analyzing the genome of a man that died in the Tianyuan Cave near Beijing, China 40,000 years ago.
Though several ancient humans have been sequenced in Europe and Siberia, few have been sequenced from East Asia, particularly China, where the archaeological record shows a rich history for early modern humans. This new study on the Tianyuan man marks the earliest ancient DNA from East Asia, and the first ancient genome-wide data from China.
Using new molecular techniques only published in the last two years, Professor Fu Qiaomei and her team at the Molecular Paleontology Lab at the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) have found genetic similarities between Tianyuan man and a 35,000-year-old individual from Belgium, GoyetQ116-1.
The genetic similarities between Tianyuan man and GoyetQ116-1 are not shared with other ancient Europeans, suggesting that it is not due to direct interactions between the populations represented by the Tianyuan and GoyetQ116-1 individuals. Instead, the researchers suggested that the two populations derived some of their ancestry from the same sub-population prior to the European-Asian separation.
A second unexpected result was that Tianyuan man has genetic similarities to South Americans, in a pattern similar to that found for the Melanesian Papuan and Andamanese Onge. This study directly confirms that the multiple ancestries represented in Native Americans were all from populations in mainland Asia.
What is intriguing, however, is that the migration to the Americas occurred approximately 20,000 years ago, but the Tianyuan individual is twice that age. Thus, the population diversity represented in the Americas must have persisted in mainland Asia in two or more distinct populations since 40,000 years ago.
The Tianyuan man is only one individual, but the deeper sequencing of his genome reveals a complicated separation for ancient Europeans and Asians and hints at a diverse genetic landscape for humans in East Asia. Their study also showed that he derives from a population that is related to present-day East Asians, but is not directly ancestral to these populations, further suggesting that multiple genetically distinct populations were located in Asia from 40,000 years ago until the present.
The article can be found at: Yang et al. (2017) 40,000-Year-Old Individual from Asia Provides Insight into Early Population Structure in Eurasia.
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Source: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Photo: Fu Qiaomei.
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