A Reanalysis of Eurasian Population History: Ancient DNA Evidence of Population Affinities

TL;DR

This study reanalyzed ancient mitochondrial DNA from Asian populations to clarify their genetic affinities, revealing distinct regional relationships and challenging previous assumptions about European-like features in the Linzi population.

Contribution

It provides a detailed reanalysis of ancient DNA data, highlighting the genetic distinctions of populations and the impact of sequence length on analysis accuracy.

Findings

Egyin Gol closely related to northern East Asians

Linzi shows potential links to early Iranians

Sequence length affects genetic affinity results

Abstract

Mitochondrial hypervariable region I genetic data from ancient populations at two sites from Asia, Linzi in Shandong (northern China) and Egyin Gol in Mongolia, were reanalyzed to detect population affinities. Data from a total of 51 modern populations were used to generate distance measures (Fst's) to the two ancient populations. The tests first analyzed relationships at the regional level, and then compiled the top regional matches for an overall comparison to the two probe populations. The reanalysis showed that the Egyin Gol and Linzi populations have clear distinctions in genetic affinity. The Egyin Gol population as a whole appears to bear close affinities with modern populations of northern East Asia. The Linzi population does seem to have some genetic affinities with the West as suggested by the original analysis, though the original attribution of "European-like" seems to be misleading. This study suggests that the Linzi individuals are potentially related to early Iranians, who are thought to have been widespread in parts of Central Eurasia and the steppe regions in the first millennium BC, though some significant admixture between a number of populations of varying origin cannot be ruled out. The study also examines the effect of sequence length on this type of genetic data analysis and provides analysis and explanation for the results of previous studies on the Linzi sample as compared to this one.