Fine‐scale genetic structure of Tujia and central Han Chinese revealing massive genetic admixture under language borrowing

Abstract

Archaeological, genetic, and linguistic evidence has supported the idea that northern China is the original center of modern Sino‐Tibetan‐speaking populations. However, the demographic history of subsequent southward migration and genetic admixture of Han Chinese with surrounding indigenous populations remain uncharacterized, and the language shifts and assimilations accompanied by movement of people, or just an adaptation of cultural ideas among populations in central China is still unclear, especially for Tibeto‐Burman‐speaking Tujia and central Han Chinese populations. To resolve this, we genotyped over 60K genome‐wide markers in 505 unrelated individuals from 63 indigenous populations. Our results showed both studied Han and Tujia were at the intermediate position in the modern East Asian North–South genetic cline and there was a correlation between the genetic composition and the latitude. We observed the strong genetic assimilation between Tujia people and central Han Chinese, which suggested massive population movements and genetic admixture under language borrowing. Tujia and central Han Chinese could be modeled as a two‐way admixture deriving primary ancestry from a northern ancestral population closely related to the ancient DevilsCave and present‐day Tibetans and a southern ancestral population closely related to the present‐day Tai‐Kadai and Austronesian‐speaking groups. The ancestral northern population we suspect to be related to the Neolithic millet farming groups in the Yellow River Basin or central China. We showed that the newly genotyped populations in Hubei Province had a higher proportion of DevilsCave or modern Tungusic/Mongolic‐related northern ancestries, while the Hunan populations harbored a higher proportion of Austronesian/Tai‐Kadai‐related southern ancestries.

The genomic formation of Tanka people, an isolated 'Gypsies in water' in the coastal region of Southeast China

“…Wang et al recently reconstructed one deep evolutionary framework and found that the deep paleolithic coastal migration route dispersed one deeply diverged lineages related to South Asian Onge Hunter-Gatherer people, which also widely distributed in modern and ancient Tibetans, Jomon and southeastern coastal Hanben people with a variable proportion (C. C. . Further three Holocene expansions from Amur River Basin, YRB, and Yangtze River Basin dispersed East Asia's language, farming and people, which reshaped the patterns of the modern mosaic genetic landscape of East Asia (Ning et al, 2020; C. C. Yang et al, 2020). Ancient DNA research further demonstrated significant southward migration of millet farmers from YRB to South China, as well as southward migration of southern Chinese agriculturists to the Island and Mainland of Southeast Asia, which further complicated the following molecular patterns of the population genomic diversity in ancient southern Chinese indigenous people and Southeast Asians (Larena et al, 2021;Lipson et al, 2018;McColl et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020).…”

“…Further three Holocene expansions from Amur River Basin, YRB, and Yangtze River Basin dispersed East Asia's language, farming and people, which reshaped the patterns of the modern mosaic genetic landscape of East Asia (Ning et al, 2020; C. C. Yang et al, 2020). Ancient DNA research further demonstrated significant southward migration of millet farmers from YRB to South China, as well as southward migration of southern Chinese agriculturists to the Island and Mainland of Southeast Asia, which further complicated the following molecular patterns of the population genomic diversity in ancient southern Chinese indigenous people and Southeast Asians (Larena et al, 2021;Lipson et al, 2018;McColl et al, 2018;Yang et al, 2020). These genetic legacy investigations provided better proxies or surrogates of the ancient sources for modeling the formation of modern East Asians.…”

“…These genetic legacy investigations provided better proxies or surrogates of the ancient sources for modeling the formation of modern East Asians. Thus, we obtained the genome-wide SNPs data from the southeastern region of China and merged them with all available modern and ancient East Asians (Guanglin He et al, 2020;Lipson et al, 2018;D. Liu et al, 2020;McColl et al, 2018;Ning et al, 2020;C.…”

“…Liu et al, 2020;McColl et al, 2018;Ning et al, 2020;C. C. Wang et al, 2021;Yang et al, 2020) to perform population genomic studies focused on the exploration of the genetic origin of Tanka people and their interaction with modern and ancient surrounding populations. We identified one unique ancestry composition in the Tanka people, which can be modeled as the admixture result of the southern sources related to the coastal Austronesian-speaking Ami/ancient Hanben, and northern sources related to Chromopaintor2 and explored the finer-scale genetic structure based on the coancestry matrix using the FineSTRUCTURE v4(Lawson, Hellenthal, Myers, & Falush, 2012).…”

Massively parallel sequencing of 165 ancestry-informative SNPs and forensic biogeographical ancestry inference in three southern Chinese Sinitic/Tai-Kadai populations

“…Complex population history, including special patterns of Pleistocene-Holocene transitions, processes of neolithization and agriculture-mediated Holocene population expansion, has shaped the modern genetic diversity of East Asia [18, 19]. Previous genetic studies have demonstrated a significant north-south genetic distinction in China [19] and significant genetic differences between Tibeto-Burman-, Turkic-, Sinitic- and Tai-Kadai-speaking populations [20-23]. Recent paleogenetic evidence has also suggested that significant genetic differentiation between northern and southern East Asians and between Highlanders and lowland East Asians occurred from the early Neolithic period [22, 24].…”