Central Eurasian genetic specifity detected

Found at Dienekes and GNXP:

Hui Li et al., Genetic Landscape of Eurasia and “Admixture” in Uyghurs. AJHG 2009. Now freely available at PubMed.

The interesting stuff is in figure 1:


So we have now a cluster centered at the Khanty (an East Uralic population) but strong in Central Asians that is distinct from both West and East Eurasians.

I think this is the coolest discovery of autosomal genetics in quite a long time.

Dienekes protests about the inconsistence of this with Y-DNA but I fail to see the connection, because Y-DNA or even mtDNA, surely scattered in the early Upper Paleolithic when Eurasians were still very much undifferentiated, while these components are surely shallower and represent regional homogeneization processes that happened surely only after the LGM. Also the impact of Y-DNA flows may be really weak: Buriats and Finns share Y-DNA lineage, as do Polish and many Indians or West Europeans and some Central Africans but it's obvious that these don't correlate too well with autosomal genetic clustering which has its own processes of regional homogeneization, while haploid genetics and specially Y-DNA is subject to high odds of fixation by mere drift and founder effects.

Razib says that the authors seem to be arguing for greater number of (strategically chosen?) populations, what makes total sense and has served, when done, to add many shades to the tricomy of the old HapMap continental hyper-simplification.

However it's very possible that a deeper cluster analysis would have revealed futher clusters, maybe an Indian one (very small sample though) or a distinction between the Khanty and Central Asians or...

Where does this Central Eurasian cluster stem from. I'd say, based on haploid genetics, that it was probably created by the admixture of a West Eurasian and East Eurasian migration converging in that peripheral area and then coalescing into a rather homogeneous cluster on its own right. That would explain why the population appears almost exactly intermediate between the two major continental groups and also why there is no haploid lineage that specifically belongs to that region (all are shared with either West Eurasia or East Asia).

East Asian variations

It is noticeable that three quite distinct populations emerge in East Asia: inland, coastal and south. These are probably essentially comparable with the blue, yellow and one (or all together) of the SE Asian components detected in the HUGO Consortium paper.

Uyghuristan explodes

The ultracapitalist totalitarian regime of China is having more and more problems. Last year was the Tibetan revolt, quelled bloodily, and (aka Xinjiang, aka East Turkestan). These two countries, together with Inner Mongolia, are the largest ethnically distinct nations under Chinese control (see note below) and Beijing has made repeated efforts to sinicise them, by means of colonization and aculturation.

Additionally the most populous state on Earth and allegedly the second economic power after the USA, is facing many other problems in the majoritary Han country as well. From a disastrous ecology, with ample economic implications, to widespread corruption, from a segregation policy between urban and rural dwellers that equates to internal colonialism to the instability of its attempts to control all communications and thoughts in the Internet era, China is a country that promotes wild capitalism under a red banner that nowadays has almost only a nationalist meaning.

As rather succesful capitalist country, it has faced but so far quelled the demands by the peoples of democracy and transparency that usually accompany such Buregueois processes. For how long will the unusual Chinese regime be able to contain the waters of that river of Chinese and other nationalities that demand more freedom, more transparency and less opression and totalitarian control?

I suspect that for not much longer.Though it can still be some years, specially as the regime can still claim the rather impressive success of the last decades. But eventually it will have to meet the demands of the people: it is unavoidable and should be good for the country.

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Note: actually they are not the largest by number, as Ebizur made me notice in a comment, but they are by extension. The Zhuang, who live north of Vietnam are the largest nation in China after the Han themselves.

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Update: troops have been sent into Urumqi and there are reports that suggest this is the deadliest clampdown in China since the Revolution. Official figures mention 159 deaths, mostly Han, but Uyghur sources say that the figure is much much larger and that almost all are ethnical Uyghurs.

Ethnic Han irregular squads have been reported attacking people (though at least in one case police intervened against them) and there are reports of thousands, mostly Uyghurs, arrested indiscriminately.

Source: BBC.
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