scholarly journals Extensive Ethnolinguistic Diversity in Vietnam Reflects Multiple Sources of Genetic Diversity

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (9) ◽  
pp. 2503-2519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dang Liu ◽  
Nguyen Thuy Duong ◽  
Nguyen Dang Ton ◽  
Nguyen Van Phong ◽  
Brigitte Pakendorf ◽  
...  

Abstract Vietnam features extensive ethnolinguistic diversity and occupies a key position in Mainland Southeast Asia. Yet, the genetic diversity of Vietnam remains relatively unexplored, especially with genome-wide data, because previous studies have focused mainly on the majority Kinh group. Here, we analyze newly generated genome-wide single-nucleotide polymorphism data for the Kinh and 21 additional ethnic groups in Vietnam, encompassing all five major language families in Mainland Southeast Asia. In addition to analyzing the allele and haplotype sharing within the Vietnamese groups, we incorporate published data from both nearby modern populations and ancient samples for comparison. In contrast to previous studies that suggested a largely indigenous origin for Vietnamese genetic diversity, we find that Vietnamese ethnolinguistic groups harbor multiple sources of genetic diversity that likely reflect different sources for the ancestry associated with each language family. However, linguistic diversity does not completely match genetic diversity: There have been extensive interactions between the Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai groups; different Austro-Asiatic groups show different affinities with other ethnolinguistic groups; and we identified a likely case of cultural diffusion in which some Austro-Asiatic groups shifted to Austronesian languages during the past 2,500 years. Overall, our results highlight the importance of genome-wide data from dense sampling of ethnolinguistic groups in providing new insights into the genetic diversity and history of an ethnolinguistically diverse region, such as Vietnam.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dang Liu ◽  
Nguyen Thuy Duong ◽  
Nguyen Dang Ton ◽  
Nguyen Van Phong ◽  
Brigitte Pakendorf ◽  
...  

AbstractVietnam features extensive ethnolinguistic diversity and occupies a key position in Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA). Yet, the genetic diversity of Vietnam remains relatively unexplored, especially with genome-wide data, because previous studies have focused mainly on the majority Kinh group. Here we analyze newly-generated genome-wide SNP data for the Kinh and 21 additional ethnic groups in Vietnam, encompassing all five major language families in MSEA. In addition to analyzing the allele and haplotype sharing within the Vietnamese groups, we incorporate published data from both nearby modern populations and ancient samples for comparison. We find that the Vietnamese ethnolinguistic groups harbor multiple sources of genetic diversity that are associated with heterogeneous ancestry sharing profiles in each language family. However, linguistic diversity does not completely match genetic diversity; there have been extensive interactions between the Hmong-Mien and Tai-Kadai groups, and a likely case of cultural diffusion in which some Austro-Asiatic groups shifted to Austronesian languages. Overall, our results highlight the importance of genome-wide data from dense sampling of ethnolinguistic groups in providing new insights into the genetic diversity and history of an ethnolinguistically-diverse region, such as Vietnam.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Lipson ◽  
Po-Ru Loh ◽  
Nick Patterson ◽  
Priya Moorjani ◽  
Ying-Chin Ko ◽  
...  

Austronesian languages are spread across half the globe, from Easter Island to Madagascar. Evidence from linguistics and archaeology indicates that the "Austronesian expansion," which began 4-5 thousand years ago, likely had roots in Taiwan, but the ancestry of present-day Austronesian-speaking populations remains controversial. Here, focusing primarily on Island Southeast Asia, we analyze genome-wide data from 56 populations using new methods for tracing ancestral gene flow. We show that all sampled Austronesian groups harbor ancestry that is more closely related to aboriginal Taiwanese than to any present-day mainland population. Surprisingly, western Island Southeast Asian populations have also inherited ancestry from a source nested within the variation of present-day populations speaking Austro-Asiatic languages, which have historically been nearly exclusive to the mainland. Thus, either there was once a substantial Austro-Asiatic presence in Island Southeast Asia, or Austronesian speakers migrated to and through the mainland, admixing there before continuing to western Indonesia.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (13) ◽  
pp. eabe4414
Author(s):  
Guido Alberto Gnecchi-Ruscone ◽  
Elmira Khussainova ◽  
Nurzhibek Kahbatkyzy ◽  
Lyazzat Musralina ◽  
Maria A. Spyrou ◽  
...  

The Scythians were a multitude of horse-warrior nomad cultures dwelling in the Eurasian steppe during the first millennium BCE. Because of the lack of first-hand written records, little is known about the origins and relations among the different cultures. To address these questions, we produced genome-wide data for 111 ancient individuals retrieved from 39 archaeological sites from the first millennia BCE and CE across the Central Asian Steppe. We uncovered major admixture events in the Late Bronze Age forming the genetic substratum for two main Iron Age gene-pools emerging around the Altai and the Urals respectively. Their demise was mirrored by new genetic turnovers, linked to the spread of the eastern nomad empires in the first centuries CE. Compared to the high genetic heterogeneity of the past, the homogenization of the present-day Kazakhs gene pool is notable, likely a result of 400 years of strict exogamous social rules.


2018 ◽  
Vol 116 (2) ◽  
pp. 593-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy van Dorp ◽  
Sara Lowes ◽  
Jonathan L. Weigel ◽  
Naser Ansari-Pour ◽  
Saioa López ◽  
...  

Few phenomena have had as profound or long-lasting consequences in human history as the emergence of large-scale centralized states in the place of smaller scale and more local societies. This study examines a fundamental, and yet unexplored, consequence of state formation: its genetic legacy. We studied the genetic impact of state centralization during the formation of the eminent precolonial Kuba Kingdom of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in the 17th century. We analyzed genome-wide data from over 690 individuals sampled from 27 different ethnic groups from the Kasai Central Province of the DRC. By comparing genetic patterns in the present-day Kuba, whose ancestors were part of the Kuba Kingdom, with those in neighboring non-Kuba groups, we show that the Kuba today are more genetically diverse and more similar to other groups in the region than expected, consistent with the historical unification of distinct subgroups during state centralization. We also found evidence of genetic mixing dating to the time of the Kingdom at its most prominent. Using this unique dataset, we characterize the genetic history of the Kasai Central Province and describe the historic late wave of migrations into the region that contributed to a Bantu-like ancestry component found across large parts of Africa today. Taken together, we show the power of genetics to evidence events of sociopolitical importance and highlight how DNA can be used to better understand the behaviors of both people and institutions in the past.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cesar Fortes-Lima ◽  
Paul Verdu

Abstract During the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade (TAST), around twelve million Africans were enslaved and forcibly moved from Africa to the Americas and Europe, durably influencing the genetic and cultural landscape of a large part of humanity since the 15th century. Following historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists, population geneticists have, since the 1950’s mainly, extensively investigated the genetic diversity of populations on both sides of the Atlantic. These studies shed new lights into the largely unknown genetic origins of numerous enslaved-African descendant communities in the Americas, by inferring their genetic relationships with extant African, European, and Native American populations. Furthermore, exploring genome-wide data with novel statistical and bioinformatics methods, population geneticists have been increasingly able to infer the last 500 years of admixture histories of these populations. These inferences have highlighted the diversity of histories experienced by enslaved-African descendants, and the complex influences of socio-economic, political, and historical contexts on human genetic diversity patterns during and after the slave trade. Finally, the recent advances of paleogenomics unveiled crucial aspects of the life and health of the first generation of enslaved Africans in the Americas. Altogether, human population genetics approaches in the genomic and paleogenomic era need to be coupled with history, archaeology, anthropology, and demography in interdisciplinary research, to reconstruct the multifaceted and largely unknown history of the TAST and its influence on human biological and cultural diversities today. Here, we review anthropological genomics studies published over the past 15 years and focusing on the history of enslaved-African descendant populations in the Americas.


Ibis ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 160 (4) ◽  
pp. 855-869 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luzhang Ruan ◽  
Wei Xu ◽  
Yuqing Han ◽  
Chaoying Zhu ◽  
Bicai Guan ◽  
...  

Science ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 363 (6432) ◽  
pp. 1230-1234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iñigo Olalde ◽  
Swapan Mallick ◽  
Nick Patterson ◽  
Nadin Rohland ◽  
Vanessa Villalba-Mouco ◽  
...  

We assembled genome-wide data from 271 ancient Iberians, of whom 176 are from the largely unsampled period after 2000 BCE, thereby providing a high-resolution time transect of the Iberian Peninsula. We document high genetic substructure between northwestern and southeastern hunter-gatherers before the spread of farming. We reveal sporadic contacts between Iberia and North Africa by ~2500 BCE and, by ~2000 BCE, the replacement of 40% of Iberia’s ancestry and nearly 100% of its Y-chromosomes by people with Steppe ancestry. We show that, in the Iron Age, Steppe ancestry had spread not only into Indo-European–speaking regions but also into non-Indo-European–speaking ones, and we reveal that present-day Basques are best described as a typical Iron Age population without the admixture events that later affected the rest of Iberia. Additionally, we document how, beginning at least in the Roman period, the ancestry of the peninsula was transformed by gene flow from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean.


2019 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 636-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrico Macholdt ◽  
Leonardo Arias ◽  
Nguyen Thuy Duong ◽  
Nguyen Dang Ton ◽  
Nguyen Van Phong ◽  
...  

AbstractVietnam exhibits great cultural and linguistic diversity, yet the genetic history of Vietnamese populations remains poorly understood. Previous studies focused mostly on the majority Kinh group, and thus the genetic diversity of the many other groups has not yet been investigated. Here we analyze complete mtDNA genome sequences and ~2.3 Mb sequences of the male-specific portion of the Y chromosome from the Kinh and 16 minority populations, encompassing all five language families present in Vietnam. We find highly variable levels of diversity within and between groups that do not correlate with either geography or language family. In particular, the Mang and Sila have undergone recent, independent bottlenecks, while the majority group, Kinh, exhibits low levels of differentiation with other groups. The two Austronesian-speaking groups, Giarai and Ede, show a potential impact of matrilocality on their patterns of variation. Overall, we find that isolation, coupled with limited contact involving some groups, has been the major factor influencing the genetic structure of Vietnamese populations, and that there is substantial genetic diversity that is not represented by the Kinh.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Denham ◽  
Mark Donohue

The Holocene history of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) is dominated by the ‘Out-of-Taiwan’ hypothesis and derivatives, such as the spread of the Island Southeast Asian Neolithic. According to these ideas, approximately 4500–4000 years ago, farmer-voyagers from Taiwan migrated southward into ISEA to subsequently acculturate, assimilate or displace pre-existing inhabitants. These processes are considered to have produced a consilience between human genetics, Austronesian languages and the archaeological record within ISEA, although recurrent critiques have questioned these putative correspondences. These critiques have proposed that each line of evidence should be independently evaluated and considered, rather than assumed to correspond. In this paper, the authors advocate a fuller engagement with and a deeper understanding of the spatial and temporal processes that structure archaeological, genetic and linguistic distributions within Island Southeast Asia. Geography and history are often marginalized in discussions of the Holocene history of ISEA, yet both are fundamental to the interpretation and reconciliation of multidisciplinary data within the region. These themes are discussed using aphorisms that are designed to be illustrative, namely to promote thought and reflection, rather than to be comprehensive.


2012 ◽  
Vol 367 (1590) ◽  
pp. 793-799 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Jobling

The historical record tells us stories of migrations, population expansions and colonization events in the last few thousand years, but what was their demographic impact? Genetics can throw light on this issue, and has mostly done so through the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and the male-specific Y chromosome. However, there are a number of problems, including marker ascertainment bias, possible influences of natural selection, and the obscuring layers of the palimpsest of historical and prehistorical events. Y-chromosomal lineages are particularly affected by genetic drift, which can be accentuated by recent social selection. A diversity of approaches to expansions in Europe is yielding insights into the histories of Phoenicians, Roma, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings, and new methods for producing and analysing genome-wide data hold much promise. The field would benefit from more consensus on appropriate methods, and better communication between geneticists and experts in other disciplines, such as history, archaeology and linguistics.


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