September 12, 2011

Y chromosomes from south to north in East Eurasia



I am continuing my Y-STR boycott, but I have to note that the paper uses the "evolutionary rate", and hence its age estimates are wrong. A great range of ages can be supported when one uses Y-STRs, because of their poor qualities, but, as a first step the 19ky estimate should be downsized to about 6ky.

I know next to nothing about Tibeto-Burman languages, but, apparently the age estimate for Proto-Han and Proto-Tibeto-Burman unity is... 6ky. I would wager that we have here, one more piece of evidence for Y-chromosome-language correlation, and not at all events of glacial antiquity.

Table 1 contains the haplogroup frequencies:


The clustering analysis is instructive:


Indo-Aryan/Dravidian are the clear outgroup, due to their possessing a set of West Eurasian/South Asian haplogroups largely lacking in Southeast Asia. Altaic and Austronesian is slightly closer to the main group, probably due to a different set of haplogroups. Not surprisingly, Austroasiatic speakers who are native to Southeast Asia are closer to Sino-Tibetans, while the latter category emerges naturally, joining Han with Tibeto-Burman.

PLoS ONE 6(8): e24282. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0024282

Human Migration through Bottlenecks from Southeast Asia into East Asia during Last Glacial Maximum Revealed by Y Chromosomes

Xiaoyun Cai et al.

Molecular anthropological studies of the populations in and around East Asia have resulted in the discovery that most of the Y-chromosome lineages of East Asians came from Southeast Asia. However, very few Southeast Asian populations had been investigated, and therefore, little was known about the purported migrations from Southeast Asia into East Asia and their roles in shaping the genetic structure of East Asian populations. Here, we present the Y-chromosome data from 1,652 individuals belonging to 47 Mon-Khmer (MK) and Hmong-Mien (HM) speaking populations that are distributed primarily across Southeast Asia and extend into East Asia. Haplogroup O3a3b-M7, which appears mainly in MK and HM, indicates a strong tie between the two groups. The short tandem repeat network of O3a3b-M7 displayed a hierarchical expansion structure (annual ring shape), with MK haplotypes being located at the original point, and the HM and the Tibeto-Burman haplotypes distributed further away from core of the network. Moreover, the East Asian dominant haplogroup O3a3c1-M117 shows a network structure similar to that of O3a3b-M7. These patterns indicate an early unidirectional diffusion from Southeast Asia into East Asia, which might have resulted from the genetic drift of East Asian ancestors carrying these two haplogroups through many small bottle-necks formed by the complicated landscape between Southeast Asia and East Asia. The ages of O3a3b-M7 and O3a3c1-M117 were estimated to be approximately 19 thousand years, followed by the emergence of the ancestors of HM lineages out of MK and the unidirectional northward migrations into East Asia.

Link

13 comments:

Andrew Oh-Willeke said...

The big conclusion of the paper is that Hmong-Mien people (a minority in every country where they are found, mostly Southern China) derives from the Mon-Khmer (Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian) people genetically, and presumably linguistically, resolving a major outstanding issue regarding the relationships of Southeast Asian languages.

eurologist said...

I don't see an "annual ring shape structure" for O3a3c1-M117. It is basal for all locations/languages, with few if any mutation steps going through the Mon-Khmer or Hmong-Mien populations, first. On the contrary, there are something like 6 examples in the opposite order, going through the Sino-Tibetan population first. My guess would be this just spread with rice farming, and had its largest population explosion in the many disjointed Sino-Tibetan regions.

terryt said...

"Indo-Aryan/Dravidian are the clear outgroup, due to their possessing a set of West Eurasian/South Asian haplogroups largely lacking in Southeast Asia".

Tends to negate the idea that Dravidian is related to Austro-Asiatic.

Jim said...

Signs of some language shifting going in the past. Tai-Kadai is now thought to be a branch of Austronesian, at the same level as the various languages on Taiwan and Malayo-Polynesian.

As for Hmongic, the historical records show them first in northeastern China, and they also have mythological connections with that area (mythic descent form Hou Yi etc.) Where they are now, and have been for centuries, in southern China has had Austroasiatic-speaking populations for ever.

Unknown said...

This is the first paper in long time. giving more data points for 02(95).

Chinese universities are spending so much time and energy on the papers covering all over Asia. Whether it is South Asian or East Asian. It is good to get clear picture. Most of the focus is on O3. Time to get O2 it's place in Austro Asiatic genetics.

terryt said...

"My guess would be this just spread with rice farming, and had its largest population explosion in the many disjointed Sino-Tibetan regions".

I think you are probably correct there. After all both O3a3b-M7 and O3a3c1-M117 are downstream considerably from O3. and haplogroup O3a3 seems to be Chinese. And this tends to support the idea:

"As for Hmongic, the historical records show them first in northeastern China, and they also have mythological connections with that area".

Once more Chinese researchers appear unwilling to see any southward movement of population from China.

"Time to get O2 it's place in Austro Asiatic genetics".

O2a seems to be associated with Austro-Asiatic, however it would be a huge stretch to match O2b with it.

terryt said...

"The big conclusion of the paper is that Hmong-Mien people (a minority in every country where they are found, mostly Southern China) derives from the Mon-Khmer (Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian) people genetically, and presumably linguistically, resolving a major outstanding issue regarding the relationships of Southeast Asian languages".

Yes. The two language groups are related. As are:

"Tai-Kadai is now thought to be a branch of Austronesian, at the same level as the various languages on Taiwan and Malayo-Polynesian".

And all four groups are probably all ultimately related. And:

"few if any mutation steps going through the Mon-Khmer or Hmong-Mien populations, first. On the contrary, there are something like 6 examples in the opposite order, going through the Sino-Tibetan population first".

So the old idea that all the Far Eastern languages are related has been shown to be quite possibly correct' in spite of many efforts to separate them from each other.

Onur Dincer said...

I couldn't find information on all of the specific ethnic groups tested in the paper. Does anyone know where such information is found if any?

Jim said...

"So the old idea that all the Far Eastern languages are related has been shown to be quite possibly correct' in spite of many efforts to separate them from each other."

Only as long as you don't consider Chinese or the rest of sino-Tibetan, or Japanese, to be Far Eastern languages. So no.

"The big conclusion of the paper is that Hmong-Mien people (a minority in every country where they are found, mostly Southern China) derives from the Mon-Khmer (Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian) people genetically, and presumably linguistically, resolving a major outstanding issue regarding the relationships of Southeast Asian languages".

Yes. The two language groups are related. As are: "

No. "presumably linguistically"?

The relatedness of hmongic and austrasiatic has not been demonstrated and I don't know of anyone who still claims any genetic link exists. the bilogical relatedness of two populations syas nothing definite about any genetic realtions between their languages. It just doesn't. People can shift languages and they can't shift haplotypes.


However.... no one knwos what the language map looked like 5,000 years ago there, and no one knows what those languages, proto-languages of these groups, looked like. The work is still to be done.

So this whole proposal may turn out to be exactly what did happen. For the longest people just assumed Vietnamese was Sino-Tibetan. I think when the truth came out it disgusted both the Cambodians and the Vietnamese equally.

terryt said...

"Only as long as you don't consider Chinese or the rest of sino-Tibetan, or Japanese, to be Far Eastern languages. So no".

Cetainly Japanese and Korean are not related to Sino-Tibetan and the other East Asian/SE Asian languages, nor to Melanesian languages.

"However.... no one knwos what the language map looked like 5,000 years ago there, and no one knows what those languages, proto-languages of these groups, looked like. The work is still to be done".

Agreed. But I would be very surprised if it is not ultimately shown that the four language groups Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic, Hmong-Mien/Mon-Khmer and Tai-Kadai/Austronesian are related to each other from much further back than that date.

"For the longest people just assumed Vietnamese was Sino-Tibetan. I think when the truth came out it disgusted both the Cambodians and the Vietnamese equally".

I would have thought that both Cambodians and Vietnamese would have been proud to be separate from Chinese.

By the way, I notice that the authors use the 'old' nomenclature. O-M7 is now O3a2b and O-M117 is now O3a2c1a. As far as I'm aware O-M117 is also present in Tibetans (not surprising) and Japanese. The ancestral Haplogroup O3a2-P201 is basically Han Chinese.

Jim said...

Mon-Khmer is Austroasiatic already. And it's quite possible that eventually we'll get to a point where we can compare proto-Austronesian and at least the branches of Austroasiatic, we may well find that there is a good connection.

Hmongic is probably going to turn out to be from up around Korea, and who knows what that will mean. They don't have to be related just because they were neighbors 5,000 years ago, but they do both share some pretty similar origin myths.

Sino-Tibetan? I don't expect it to end up related to these others. They've Sino-Tibetan to a point where they can compare proto-forms to that Yeneseian-Na-Dene lash-up that Vajda demonstrated recently, and that would put things back 6-7,000 years ago. Not bad. Who knows where that proto-homeland will turn out to be, but I doubt it will be in the Yellow River Valley or really anywhere near those other groups.

Enkilo said...

"The big conclusion of the paper is that Hmong-Mien people (a minority in every country where they are found, mostly Southern China) derives from the Mon-Khmer (Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian) people genetically, and presumably linguistically, resolving a major outstanding issue regarding the relationships of Southeast Asian languages".

Hmong people drives from Mon-Khmer? We migrated to Vietname,laotion,Cambodia,Thailand. Not derives from it. please provide evidence/historic that we Hmong derives from Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian?

Enkilo said...

"Hmong-Mien people (a minority in every country where they are found, mostly Southern China) derives from the Mon-Khmer (Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian) people genetically, and presumably linguistically, resolving a major outstanding issue regarding the relationships of Southeast Asian languages."

Where did you get this information from, what histories tell that we Hmong people derives from Vietnamese-Cambodian-Laotian? We migrated to Vietname to Laos to Thailand and etc not derives from it. Our ancestors tracing from Chiyou or "Txiv yawg", we have history of being in China way back even before chinese people.