doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-16557-2.
Ancient genomes from northern China suggest links between subsistence changes and human migration
Chao Ning 1 2, Tianjiao Li 1, Ke Wang 2, Fan Zhang 1, Tao Li 2 3, Xiyan Wu 1, Shizhu Gao 4, Quanchao Zhang 5, Hai Zhang 6, Mark J Hudson 2, Guanghui Dong 7, Sihao Wu 1, Yanming Fang 8, Chen Liu 9, Chunyan Feng 10, Wei Li 6, Tao Han 5, Ruo Li 7, Jian Wei 11, Yonggang Zhu 5, Yawei Zhou 12, Chuan-Chao Wang 13, Shengying Fan 14, Zenglong Xiong 14, Zhouyong Sun 15, Maolin Ye 16, Lei Sun 8, Xiaohong Wu 6, Fawei Liang 8, Yanpeng Cao 8, Xingtao Wei 8, Hong Zhu 5, Hui Zhou 1 5, Johannes Krause 17, Martine Robbeets 18, Choongwon Jeong 19 20, Yinqiu Cui 21 22 23
Affiliations
- PMID:32483115
- PMCID: PMC7264253
- DOI: 10.1038/s41467-020-16557-2
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Ancient genomes from northern China suggest links between subsistence changes and human migration
Chao Ning et al. Nat Commun..
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Abstract
Northern China harbored the world's earliest complex societies based on millet farming, in two major centers in the Yellow (YR) and West Liao (WLR) River basins. Until now, their genetic histories have remained largely unknown. Here we present 55 ancient genomes dating to 7500-1700 BP from the YR, WLR, and Amur River (AR) regions. Contrary to the genetic stability in the AR, the YR and WLR genetic profiles substantially changed over time. The YR populations show a monotonic increase over time in their genetic affinity with present-day southern Chinese and Southeast Asians. In the WLR, intensification of farming in the Late Neolithic is correlated with increased YR affinity while the inclusion of a pastoral economy in the Bronze Age was correlated with increased AR affinity. Our results suggest a link between changes in subsistence strategy and human migration, and fuel the debate about archaeolinguistic signatures of past human migration.
Conflict of interest statement
The authors declare no competing interests.
Figures
a Location of the 19 archeological sites covering 55 ancient individuals in this study. Each symbol corresponds to a site from a specific region: circle (AR); square (WLR); triangle (YR); diamond (sites from Inner Mongolia or Shaanxi) (see Table 1 for details). The published Early Neolithic genomes from the Russian Far East (“Devil’s Gate_EN”), are also indicated. The three major river basins in northern China are indicated in different color shades, namely Amur River Basin in light green, West Liao River Basin in pink, and Yellow River Basin in light blue. The base map was prepared from the ArcGIS “World Terrain Base” included in the ArcGIS desktop standard v. 9.2. ArcGIS user license was purchased by, and authorized to, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History (MPI-SHH, Jena, Germany).b Calibrated radiocarbon dates and relative dating of ancient samples in this study. The archeological sites are ordered according to their locations. SX and IM refer to Shaanxi province and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous region of China, respectively. Their geographic locations are intermediate between the WLR and YR. Colors correspond to samples of different time periods: EN Early Neolithic, MN Middle Neolithic, LN Late Neolithic, BA Bronze Age, LBIA Late Bronze and Iron Age, IA Iron Age.
a The first two principal components constructed from 2077 present-day Eurasians; the ancient individuals are projected onto the first two PCs. Color-filled shapes represent ancient individuals, with the color-shape combinations as used in Fig. 1. Opaque circles represent the present-day individuals used for calculating PCs. Tungusic-speaking populations and Han Chinese are marked by green and purple shades, respectively. Individuals from other populations are marked by gray shades. The population labels of present-day individuals are provided in Supplementary Fig. 4.b A zoom-in visualization of the WLR and YR clusters ina.c The first two principal components calculated from present-day individuals from nine East Asian populations in the “1240k-Illumina” dataset. Present-day individuals are marked by their corresponding population names.d ADMIXTURE results for the “1240k-Illumina” dataset atK = 5. Only the East Asian populations are plotted. Present-day populations are sorted and colored according to their linguistic families.
Modeling ancient populations as a mixture of YR_MN and AR_EN.a Middle Neolithic populations in this study.X-axis shows the great circle distance from the YR_MN sites andy-axis shows estimates of AR-related ancestry proportion (represented by AR_EN).b WLR populations from Middle Neolithic to Bronze Age. Black squares represent the point estimates. Vertical bars represent ± 1 s.e.m. range, estimated by 5 cM block jackknifing.
References
- Stevens CJ, Fuller DQ. The spread of agriculture in eastern Asia: archaeological bases for hypothetical farmer/language dispersals. Lang. Dyn. Change. 2017;7:152–186.
- Liu X, Jones MK, Zhao Z, Liu G, O’Connell TC. The earliest evidence of millet as a staple crop: new light on neolithic foodways in North China. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 2012;149:283–290. - PubMed
- Zhao Z. New archaeobotanic data for the study of the origins of agriculture in China. Curr. Anthropol. 2011;52:S295–S306.
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