Peopling of China

In the course of the peopling of the World by Homo sapiens, East Asia was reached before about 50,000 years ago (50 kya). The undifferentiated "non-African" of 70 kya diverged into identifiable East Asian and West Eurasian lineages by about 50 kya.[1] This early East Asian lineage diverged further during the Last Glacial Maximum, contributing significantly to the peopling of the Americas via Beringia after about 25 kya.[2] After the last ice age China became cut off from neighboring island groups. The modern Mongoloid phenotype develops fully only in the Neolithic (after 10 kya).[3]

Modern Northeast Asians, including Chinese people, are morphologically distinct from the ancestral Mongoloid phenotype, and from modern Southern Mongoloids, by the presence of Sinodonty.[4][5][6]

Genetic history

Paternal lineage

Looking at Y-DNA studies, it would seem that one of the earliest groups of humans to reach Asia did so approximately 50-60,000 years ago. People bearing genetic markers ancestral to Haplogroups C and D came through coastal India and proceeded to Southeast Asia. Haplogroup C moved to East Asia, Australia and the Americas. Another group of peoples bearing the Y-DNA Haplogroup D has left descendants in the Andaman islands, Tibet, and Japan.[7][8]

A later group, carrying the Y-DNA haplogroup K was established approximately 40,000-50,000 years ago. Its origins were probably in Southwestern Asia or South Asia.

One branch, Haplogroup Q, believed to have arisen in Central Asia or South Asia approximately 17,000 to 22,000 years ago, went north to populate Siberia and the Americas. Some northern Chinese have this genetic marker. Another branch, Haplogroups N and O, went south and by 35,000 years ago went on to populate first Southeast Asia and then East Asia.

Maternal lineage

Mitochondrial DNA likewise supports the hypothesis that the ancestors of the Chinese came to Asia from Africa. The M Haplogroup, a descendant of the African L3 Haplogroup, originated somewhere between Africa, India and Central Asia. This marker alone is carried by all populations in South Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, Oceania, and most of the Ameridian populations.[9]

Climate history

During the Last Glacial Maximum, 29,000 to 18,000 years ago, northern China was a treeless steppe with areas of permafrost and southern China lost much of its forest cover. The sea level was much lower. Borneo, Indonesia, the Philippines, and the Japanese archipelago may have been accessible by land. With the end of the last ice age, a period of warming occurred lasting from 18,000 to 10,000 years ago. The oceans rose and inundated vast regions leaving little trace of coastal settlements used by these people. We know little about their languages. Their cultures are likely to have been diverse. There are many limestone cave sites in southern China which show human settlements. There is evidence of pottery making. The inhabitants had bone tools, fished, and hunted pigs and deer.[10]

It is believed that the climate in southern China was warmer and wetter south of the Qing Ling mountains; elephants are known to have inhabited the Yangtze river region. The climate in Northeast China north of present-day Beijing was characterized as a cold steppe environment during this period. The presence of woolly mammoth is well documented.[11]

The climate was also much warmer between 8,000 and 3,500 years ago. In the Shandong region, excavations have found the bones of alligators and elephants.

The development of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, with the domestication of millet in the Yellow River valley region and rice in the Yangtze River valley, may have been associated with accelerated growth in the number and size of settlements and the intensified development of local cultures and languages.[12]

Settlement patterns

Early settlements in the Chinese Upper Paleolithic were either hunter-gatherer societies, or marine environment based societies characterized by shell middens.[13] Relatively speaking the land was sparsely populated, as the peoples followed the coastal regions and the river valleys.

Neolithic settlements have been found from Liaoning province in the northeast to the Chengdu region in the southwest; from Gansu province in the northwest to sites in Fujian in the southeast. The settlement pattern in the Tibetan region is yet unclear, as there is debate as to whether there was a pre-Neolithic population movement into the region.[14]

Holocene

The origin of Sino-Tibetan is uncertain. It dates to the Neolithic, or just before the Neolithic. There are various proposals. Van Driem (2005) proposes that Sino-Tibetan originated in the Sichuan Basin before 7000 BC, with an early migration into northeast India, and a later migration north of the predecessors of Chinese and Tibetic.[15] Matisoff (1991) places its origins in the eastern part of the Tibetan plateau around 4000 BC, with the various groups migrating out down the Yellow, Yangtze, Mekong, Salween and Brahmaputra rivers.[16] Blench and Post (2014) have proposed that the Sino-Tibetan homeland is northeast India, the area of greatest diversity, around 7000 BC.[17] Blench (2009)[18] proposes that the earliest speakers of Sino-Tibetan were not agriculturalists, since agriculture cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Sino-Tibetan. Rather, early Sino-Tibetan speakers were highly diverse foragers.

The Mon-Khmer languages may also have originated in what is now China, and would have entered Southeast Asia via Yunnan and the Mekong. The Miao, Thai, Burmese, and Tibetan languages may have evolved in China. It may even be that some proto-Austronesian speakers left China for Formosa and on to the islands of the Pacific. By 3,000 years ago, the sophistication of some of the cultures neighboring that of the Han Chinese can be seen in the bronzes of Sanxingdui (Sichuan), Ban Chiang (Thailand) and Dong Son (Vietnam). The domestication of the horse 6,000 years ago in the Eurasian steppes led to cultures that mixed animal husbandry and agriculture. Indo-European speakers are known to have reached the Xinjiang region and perhaps further east 4,000 years ago.

Because the East Asian landmass was initially populated from the south, and the historical record shows the Han Chinese migrating to the south and southwest, the genetic relationship among all the peoples of China is unclear.[19]

See also

References

  1. ↑ A. Seguin-Orlando et al., "Genomic structure in Europeans dating back at least 36,200 years", Science, 6 November 2014, DOI: 10.1126/science.aaa0114.
  2. ↑ "Terminal Pleistocene Alaskan genome reveals first founding population of Native Americans", Nature, Macmillan Publishers Limited, retrieved January 3, 2018
  3. ↑ Matt Cartmill, Fred H. Smith, The Human Lineage, John Wiley & Sons (2009), p. 449.
  4. ↑ Bellwood, Peter (1 March 2007). "Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago: Revised Edition". ANU E Press – via Google Books. . Keat Gin Ooi (ed.), Southeast Asia: A Historical Encyclopedia vol. 1 [Angkor Wat to East Timor], ABC-CLIO (2004), p. 495: "many of the present Southern Mongoloid populations of Indonesia and Malaysia also have a high degree of Australo-Melanesian genetic heritage" citing Bellwood (1997:89,92). See also: Fredrik Barth, "The Southern Mongoloid Migration", Man Vol. 52 (Jan., 1952), pp. 5-8. .
  5. ↑ Hamada, Ryuta, Kondo, Shintaro & Wakatsuki, Eizo. (1997). Odontometrical Analysis of Filipino Dentition. The Journal of Showa University Dental Society, 17, p. 197, citing C.G. Turner, "Teeth and prehistory in Asia", Scientific American 260 (1989), 70-77.
  6. ↑ "The present Southern Mongoloids are thought to have retained a Sundadont dentition from this ancestral Proto-Mongoloid population and hence to have developed in situ within Sundaland and adjacent parts of Mainland Southeast Asia. Polynesian and Micronesian dentitions are also within the Sundadont range, thus attesting to their Island Southeast Asian and Proto-Mongoloid origins. The 'Sinodont' teeth of northeastern Asia and the Americas are also thought to have evolved from an original and more widespread Sundadont-like ancestral form." Peter Bellwood, Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago: Revised Edition (2007), p. 90.
  7. ↑ "Asian Ancestry based on Studies of Y-DNA Variation: Part 1 Early origins — roots from Africa and emergence in East Asia". Genebase Tutorials.
  8. ↑ Shi H, Zhong H, Peng Y, et al. (2008). "Y chromosome evidence of earliest modern human settlement in East Asia and multiple origins of Tibetan and Japanese populations". BMC Biol. 6: 45. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-6-45. PMC 2605740. PMID 18959782.
  9. ↑ Yao, Y; Kong, Q; Bandelt, H; Kivisild, T; Zhang, Y (March 2002). "Phylogeographic differentiation of mitochondrial DNA in Han Chinese". Am. J. Hum. Genet. 70 (3): 635–51. doi:10.1086/338999. PMC 384943. PMID 11836649.
  10. ↑ Zhang Chi; Hsiao-Chun Hung (Fall 2008). "The Neolithic of Southern China-Origin, Development, and Dispersal". Asian Perspectives. 47 (2): 299–329. doi:10.1353/asi.0.0004.
  11. ↑ Shelach, Gideon (December 2000). "The Earliest Neolithic Cultures of Northeast China: Recent Discoveries and New Perspectives on the Beginning of Agriculture". Journal of World Prehistory. 14 (4): 363–413. doi:10.1023/A:1011124209079.
  12. ↑ Zhang Chi; Hsiao-chun Hun (March 2010). "The emergence of agriculture in southern China". Antiquity. 84 (323): 11–25.
  13. ↑ Higham, C.F.W.; Xie Guangmao; Lin Qiang (June 2011). "The prehistory of a Friction Zone: first farmers and hunters-gatherers in Southeast Asia". Antiquity. 85 (328): 529–543.
  14. ↑ Aldenderfer, Mark; Zhang Yinong (March 2004). "The Prehistory of the Tibetan Plateau to the Seventh Century A.D.: Perspectives and Research from China and the West Since 1950". Journal of World Prehistory. 18 (1): 1–55. doi:10.1023/B:JOWO.0000038657.79035.9e.
  15. ↑ van Driem (2005), pp. 91-95.
  16. ↑ Matisoff (1991), pp. 470–471.
  17. ↑ Blench & Post (2014), p. 89.
  18. ↑ Blench, Roger. 2009. If agriculture cannot be reconstructed for Proto-Sino-Tibetan, what are the consequences?. Paper presented at the 42nd International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Language and Linguistics (ICSTLL 42), Chiang Mai, November 2-4, 2009. (slides)
  19. ↑ Black ML, Wise CA, Wang W, Bittles AH (June 2006). "Combining genetics and population history in the study of ethnic diversity in the People's Republic of China". Hum. Biol. 78 (3): 277–93. doi:10.1353/hub.2006.0041. PMID 17216801.
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