The genomic origins of the Bronze Age Tarim Basin mummies.

The identity of the earliest inhabitants of Xinjiang, in the heart of Inner Asia, and the languages that they spoke have long been debated and remain contentious1. Here we present genomic data from 5 individuals dating to around 3000-2800 BC from the Dzungarian Basin and 13 individuals dating to around 2100-1700 BC from the Tarim Basin, representing the earliest yet discovered human remains from North and South Xinjiang, respectively. We find that the Early Bronze Age Dzungarian individuals exhibit a predominantly Afanasievo ancestry with an additional local contribution, and the Early-Middle Bronze Age Tarim individuals contain only a local ancestry. The Tarim individuals from the site of Xiaohe further exhibit strong evidence of milk proteins in their dental calculus, indicating a reliance on dairy pastoralism at the site since its founding. Our results do not support previous hypotheses for the origin of the Tarim mummies, who were argued to be Proto-Tocharian-speaking pastoralists descended from the Afanasievo1,2 or to have originated among the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex3 or Inner Asian Mountain Corridor cultures4. Instead, although Tocharian may have been plausibly introduced to the Dzungarian Basin by Afanasievo migrants during the Early Bronze Age, we find that the earliest Tarim Basin cultures appear to have arisen from a genetically isolated local population that adopted neighbouring pastoralist and agriculturalist practices, which allowed them to settle and thrive along the shifting riverine oases of the Taklamakan Desert.

Mitochondrial Genome of an 8,400-Year-Old Individual from Northern China Reveals a Novel Subclade Under C5d.

Ancient DNA studies have always refreshed our understanding of the human past that cannot be tracked by modern DNA alone. Until recently, ancient mitochondrial genomic studies in East Asia were still very limited. Here, we retrieved the whole mitochondrial genome of an 8,400-year-old individual from Inner Mongolia, China. Phylogenetic analyses show that the individual belongs to a previously undescribed clade under haplogroup C5d that most probably originated in northern Asia and may have a very low frequency in extant populations that have not yet been sampled. We further characterized the demographic history of mitochondrial haplogroups C5 and C5d and found that C5 experienced a sharp increase in population size starting around 4,000 years before present, the time when intensive millet farming was developed by populations who are associated with the Lower Xiajiadian culture and was widely adopted in northern China. We caution that people related to haplogroup C5 may have added this farming technology to their original way of life and that the various forms of subsistence may have provided abundant food sources and further contributed to the increase in population size.