3 days ago
- General
- South China Morning Post
Chinese team traces ‘ghost ancestors' of modern Tibetans to Yunnan province
Chinese scientists have traced the origins of the 'ghost ancestors' of modern Tibetans to the southwestern province of Yunnan through analysis of
ancient DNA
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The origins of people living on the
Tibetan Plateau – and how their ancestors migrated, adapted and settled in this cold, oxygen-poor land – have long been a mystery to the academic community.
Now, in a study published in the peer-reviewed journal Science on Friday, a group of Chinese palaeontologists have verified a hypothesis that academics had speculated about but failed to test: an
archaeological site in central Yunnan is one of the origins of populations on the Tibetan Plateau.
'This study not only fills a critical gap in the genetic data of prehistoric populations in East and Southeast Asia, but also identifies one of the Tibetan Plateau's 'ghost ancestors' for the first time from a genetic perspective,' the authors said.
It is widely known that around 80 per cent of the genetic composition of Tibetan Plateau populations originates from northern
Chinese populations dating back 9,500 to 4,000 years ago. Yet the origin of the remaining 20 per cent remains unknown, and is referred to as 'ghost ancestry' by the academic community.
To decipher the secret, scientists from various Chinese institutions, including the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Palaeoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP), the Yunnan Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology and Sichuan University set their sights on Yunnan.
