www.fgks.org   »   [go: up one dir, main page]
This site needs JavaScript to work properly. Please enable it to take advantage of the complete set of features!
Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2011;6(10):e25835.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0025835. Epub 2011 Oct 6.

Major population expansion of East Asians began before neolithic time: evidence of mtDNA genomes

Hong-Xiang Zheng  1 , Shi Yan, Zhen-Dong Qin, Yi Wang, Jing-Ze Tan, Hui Li, Li Jin
Affiliations

Major population expansion of East Asians began before neolithic time: evidence of mtDNA genomes

Hong-Xiang Zheng et al. PLoS One. 2011.

Abstract

It is a major question in archaeology and anthropology whether human populations started to grow primarily after the advent of agriculture, i.e., the Neolithic time, especially in East Asia, which was one of the centers of ancient agricultural civilization. To answer this question requires an accurate estimation of the time of lineage expansion as well as that of population expansion in a population sample without ascertainment bias. In this study, we analyzed all available mtDNA genomes of East Asians ascertained by random sampling, a total of 367 complete mtDNA sequences generated by the 1000 Genome Project, including 249 Chinese (CHB, CHD, and CHS) and 118 Japanese (JPT). We found that major mtDNA lineages underwent expansions, all of which, except for two JPT-specific lineages, including D4, D4b2b, D4a, D4j, D5a2a, A, N9a, F1a1'4, F2, B4, B4a, G2a1 and M7b1'2'4, occurred before 10 kya, i.e., before the Neolithic time (symbolized by Dadiwan Culture at 7.9 kya) in East Asia. Consistent to this observation, the further analysis showed that the population expansion in East Asia started at 13 kya and lasted until 4 kya. The results suggest that the population growth in East Asia constituted a need for the introduction of agriculture and might be one of the driving forces that led to the further development of agriculture.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Median-joining network of 367 mtDNA coding region sequences.
Median-joining network of 367 mtDNA coding region sequences corresponding to rCRS positions 577-16023. Blue, CHB; green, CHS; yellow, CHD; purple, JPT. Red squares indicate clusters with distinct expansions and Macrohaplogroup M, N and R. 1, D4; 2, D4b2b; 3, D4b2b1; 4, D4a; 5, D4j; 6, D5a2a; 7, A; 8, N9a; 9, F1a1'4; 10, F2; 11, B4; 12, B4a; 13, G2a1; 14, M7a1a; 15, M7b1'2'4. Branch length is proportional to steps of mutations except the dashed line between Macrohaplogroup M and N.
Figure 2
Figure 2. mtDNA Bayesian skyline plot showing the size trend of 4 East Eurasian populations.
The y-axis is the product of maternal effective size and generation time. The x-axis is the time from present in units of years. The thick solid line is the median estimate and the thin lines (blue) show the 95% highest posterior density limits estimated with 40,000,000 chains with the first 4,000,000 generations regarded as burn-in. Detailed settings refers to Methods.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Time estimation of each observed expansion in 4 East Eurasian populations and Bayesian skyline plot for 3 Chinese populations together.
(A)Time estimation of each observed expansion in 4 East Eurasian populations: ρ statistic-based method with Soares complete genome rate and Soares synonymous rate, and Bayesian MCMC method by BEAST. (B) mtDNA Bayesian skyline plot showing size trend of the 3 Chinese populations together, detailed settings refers to Methods. The grey area shows the time after LGM and before Neolithic Time.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Stiner MC. Thirty years on the "Broad Spectrum Revolution" and paleolithic demography. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2001;98:6993–6996. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wall JD, Przeworski M. When did the human population size start increasing? Genetics. 2000;155:1865–1874. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bettinger RL, Barton L, Morgan C. The Origins of Food Production in North China: A Different Kind of Agricultural Revolution. Evolutionary Anthropology. 2010;19:9–21.
    1. Barton L, Newsome SD, Chen FH, Wang H, Guilderson TP, et al. Agricultural origins and the isotopic identity of domestication in northern China. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009;106:5523–5528. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bar-Yosef O. The Upper Paleolithic revolution. Annual Review of Anthropology. 2002;31:363–393.

Publication types

Substances