YUAN Yuan, LI Hui

MOE Key Laboratory of Contemporary Anthropology, School of Life Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433 China

ABSTRACT: Central Asia is where population admixture takes place between eastern and western Eurasia [1]. However, little is known about the initial contact of the East and the West and the mechanism of the latter admixture. Ancient DNA plays an essential role in illustrating the migration events in history. In the past several decades, plentiful data of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of ancient inhabitants in Xinjiang province in northwestern China have been published. The mtDNAs in Xinjiang included both eastern haplogroups (such as haplogroups A, B, D, and M) and western haplogroups (such as haplogroups H, J, K, and U). Moreover, genetic admixture has been observed as early as about 3800 years ago [2]. Interestingly, although ancient people carried more European craniofacial features, ancient mtDNA supports that eastern components are more dominant. Besides, we also examined more ancient mtDNA data of populations in the surrounding areas, and found that in Central Asia, the genetic components of the East decreased from the east to west, whereas the western component increased. The present analysis suggests that initial admixture of the eastern and western Eurasians might have happened 3800 years ago in most areas of Xinjiang province, the ancient people (about 2000 years ago) carried more eastern genetic components [3].