Genes, language, and culture: an example from the tarim basin

Abstract

The Tarim Basin 'mummies' of western China continue to fascinate scholars and the general public alike due to their 'Caucasoid' features, wellpreserved material culture, and putative 'European' origins. However, there have been some uncritical efforts to link these archaeological cultures to those of other ancient Eurasian groups (e.g. the Celts) by applying syllogistic reasoning to multi-disciplinary evidence. In an attempt to provide a more cautious synthesis of the prehistory of the Tarim Basin, this paper will briefly summarize the archaeological, physical, and linguistic evidence that has been used to model human settlement of this region. These data will then be related to recent molecular anthropology research on modern populations of Central Asia, focusing especially on the Uighur in relation to their neighbours. While the genetic history of the modern peoples of a particular region is not necessarily related to their prehistoric antecedents, it is argued that the Tarim Basin experienced a surprising cultural and biological continuity despite immigration from both east and west into Xinjiang Province. This conclusion has a number of possible political ramifications in the present day that must be addressed in future literature on the subject.

7. The Prehistory of Mongolian Populations as Revealed by Studies of Osteological, Dental, and Genetic Variation

“…The moderate frequencies and diversity of West Eurasian mtDNA lineages within the populations of southern Siberia and Mongolia (Derenko et al 2002(Derenko et al , 2003Yao et al 2002;Comas et al 2004;Gokcumen et al 2008) support the early penetration of ancient European steppe cultures into this region during the Neolithic, Bronze Age, and early Iron Age. The genetic results are consistent with physical anthropological data from the Pre-Scythian Period that show the presence of crania with "Caucasoid" and mixed "CaucasoidMongoloid" features in the south Siberian steppe and Western Mongolia (Alekseev and Gohman 1984;Alekseev, Gohman, and Tumen 1987;Bruyako and Ostroverkhov 2004;Thornton and Schurr 2004). Since there are virtually no West Eurasian mtDNA lineages in the gene pools of northern and southern Han Chinese (Yao et al 2002;Kivisild et al 2002), Koreans (Horai et al 1996;Derenko et al 2004;Lee et al 2006), or Japanese (Horai et al 1996;Kivisild et al 2002;Tanaka et al 2004), Mongolia can be considered the eastern border of the distribution of maternal lineages that originated in West Eurasia.…”

“…A similar analysis of Mongolian populations by Merriwether et al (1996) was directed toward locating the ancestral homeland of Native American populations. Together, these two studies demonstrated that the four major mtDNA haplogroups commonly seen in Native American populations (A-D) were also present in Mongolia (e.g., see Schurr 2004). These maternal lineages comprised roughly half of the mtDNAs in the Mongolian populations sampled, with most of the rest likely belonging to East Eurasian haplogroups.…”

“…This type may have emerged during the introduction of steppe nomadism to East and Central Asia at the end of the Neolithic (2300-2000 BCE) by "Caucasoid" tribes of supposed Indo-European origin, who brought with them an influx of West Eurasian genes and physical traits (Phillips 1969;Alexeev, Gohman, and Tumen 1987;Thornton and Schurr 2004;Anthony 2007). The next several thousand years were marked by the appearance of a succession of dominating tribes that emerged through power struggles in the region (Spuler 1971(Spuler , 1989(Spuler , 1994Sinor 1990;Morgan 2007).…”

“…All of these maternal lineages probably originated in Central or West Asia (Torroni et al 1996(Torroni et al , 1998Macaulay et al 1999;Richards et al 2000;Capelli et al 2003) prior to their being brought to East Asia by Neolithic steppe populations some 5,000 years ago (Golden 1992;Hiebert 1994;Frachetti 2002;Renfrew 2002;Thornton and Schurr 2004;Anthony 2007). Overall, the frequency of East Eurasian haplogroups decreases in an east-to-west direction, whereas the opposite trend occurs for West Eurasian haplogroups.…”

The earliest archaeobiological evidence of the broadening agriculture in China recorded at Xishanping site in Gansu Province

“…Several earliest records of cultivated wheat have been found in China. Wheat seeds of 4000 cal a BP were found in Gumugou in the eastern Tarim Basin in Xinjiang [30]. Remains of wheat, barley, sorghum, foxtail millet, and broomcorn millet were at the Donghuishan site at 5000-4500 years ago in Minle county of Gansu Province [31] .…”