"Genetic Structure of a 2,500-Year-Old Human Population in China and Its Spatiotemporal Changes" Molecular Biology and Evolution 17:1396-1400 (2000)
Abstract
To examine temporal changes in population genetic structure, we compared the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences of three populations that lived in the same location, Linzi, China, in different periods: 2,500 years ago (the Spring?Autumn era), 2,000 years ago (the Han era), and the present day. Two indices were used to compare the genetic differences: the frequency distributions of the radiating haplotype groups and the genetic distances among the populations. The results indicate that the genetic backgrounds of the three populations are distinct from each other. Inconsistent with the geographical distribution, the 2,500-year-old Linzi population showed greater genetic similarity to present-day European populations than to present-day east Asian populations. The 2,000-year-old Linzi population had features that were intermediate between the present-day European/2,500-year-old Linzi populations and the present-day east Asian populations. These relationships suggest the occurrence of drastic spatiotemporal changes in the genetic structure of Chinese people during the past 2,500 years.
China is the symbolic country for the Mongoloid race. But when Chinese researchers made a DNA analysis on the remains of a man found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb, they found his genes were of an European. A white man.
In fact, Western China was inhabited by blond-haired blue-eyed white people 3,000 years ago. Archaeologists have discovered about 600 Caucasian mummies in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (West China), 2-3,000 years old. These mummies of the white people that once inhabited Western China were not embalmed, like the Egyptian ones were, but they were unwittingly preserved from decay by local climate