Phylogenetic evidence for Sino-Tibetan origin in northern China in the Late Neolithic.

The study of language origin and divergence is important for understanding the history of human populations and their cultures. The Sino-Tibetan language family is the second largest in the world after Indo-European, and there is a long-running debate about its phylogeny and the time depth of its original divergence1. Here we perform a Bayesian phylogenetic analysis to examine two competing hypotheses of the origin of the Sino-Tibetan language family: the 'northern-origin hypothesis' and the 'southwestern-origin hypothesis'. The northern-origin hypothesis states that the initial expansion of Sino-Tibetan languages occurred approximately 4,000-6,000 years before present (BP; taken as AD 1950) in the Yellow River basin of northern China2-4, and that this expansion is associated with the development of the Yangshao and/or Majiayao Neolithic cultures. The southwestern-origin hypothesis states that an early expansion of Sino-Tibetan languages occurred before 9,000 years BP from a region in southwest Sichuan province in China5 or in northeast India6, where a high diversity of Tibeto-Burman languages exists today. Consistent with the northern-origin hypothesis, our Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of 109 languages with 949 lexical root-meanings produced an estimated time depth for the divergence of Sino-Tibetan languages of approximately 4,200-7,800 years BP, with an average value of approximately 5,900 years BP. In addition, the phylogeny supported a dichotomy between Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman languages. Our results are compatible with the archaeological records, and with the farming and language dispersal hypothesis7 of agricultural expansion in China. Our findings provide a linguistic foothold for further interdisciplinary studies of prehistoric human activity in East Asia.

Phylogenetic evidence reveals early Kra-Dai divergence and dispersal in the late Holocene.

Studying language evolution brings a crucial perspective to bear on questions of human prehistory. As the most linguistically diverse region on earth, East and Southeast Asia have witnessed extensive sociocultural and ethnic contacts among different language communities. Especially, the Kra-Dai language family exhibits tremendous socio-cultural importance in these regions. Due to limited historical accounts, however, there are several controversies on their linguistic relatedness, ambiguities regarding the divergence time, and uncertainties on the dispersal patterns. To address these issues, here we apply Bayesian phylogenetic methods to analyze the largest lexical dataset containing 646 cognate sets compiled for 100 Kra-Dai languages. Our dated phylogenetic tree showed their initial divergence occurring approximately 4000 years BP. Phylogeographic results supported the early Kra-Dai language dispersal from the Guangxi-Guangdong area of South China towards Mainland Southeast Asia. Coupled with genetic, archaeological, paleoecologic, and paleoclimatic data, we demonstrated that the Kra-Dai language diversification could have coincided with their demic diffusion and agricultural spread shaped by the global climate change in the late Holocene. The interdisciplinary alignments shed light on reconstructing the prehistory of Kra-Dai languages and provide an indispensable piece of the puzzle for further studying prehistoric human activities in East and Southeast Asia.

[Origin of Hakka and Hakkanese: a genetics analysis].

Hakka is a distinctive Han Chinese population in Southern China speaking Hakkanese. The origin of Hakka has been controversial. In this report, we analyzed Y chromosomal markers in 148 Hakka males. Principle component analysis of Y-SNP haplotype distribution shows Hakka is clusteed strongly with the Han in Northern China, and is also close to She, a Hmong-Mien-speaking population, while the general Southern Han is fairly close to Daic populations. Admixture analysis revealed that the relative genetic contribution 80.2% (Han), 13% (She) and 6.8% (Kam) in Hakka. The network of Y-STR haplotype of M7 individuals in all concerned populations suggested two possible origins of Hmong-Mien contribution in Hakka: One is from Hubei and the other is from Canton. The Kam contribution in Hakka is likely from Kan-Yue, the ancient aborigine of Kiangsi (Jiangxi). The frequency of 9bp-deletion in Region V of mitochondrial DNA of Hakka is 19.7%, which is quite close to She but far from Han. We therefore concluded that genetically the majority of Hakka gene pool shall come from North Han with She contributing the most among all non-Han groups. Regarding the Hmong-Mien character of Hakkanese, the genetic structure of Hakka shows their core may be Kim-man, the ancient Hmong-Mien. We hypothesized that a great number of Han people from North China join this population in succession. Southern Chinese dialects, such as Hakkanese may also be those languages of Southern aborigines at first, and turn to extant appearance under the continuance effect of Northern Chinese.