Mitochondrial genome evidence reveals successful Late Paleolithic settlement on the Tibetan Plateau
Edited by Richard G. Klein, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, and approved October 21, 2009
Abstract
Due to its numerous environmental extremes, the Tibetan Plateau—the world's highest plateau—is one of the most challenging areas of modern human settlement. Archaeological evidence dates the earliest settlement on the plateau to the Late Paleolithic, while previous genetic studies have traced the colonization event(s) to no earlier than the Neolithic. To explore whether the genetic continuity on the plateau has an exclusively Neolithic time depth, we studied mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) genome variation within 6 regional Tibetan populations sampled from Tibet and neighboring areas. Our results confirm that the vast majority of Tibetan matrilineal components can trace their ancestry to Epipaleolithic and Neolithic immigrants from northern China during the mid-Holocene. Significantly, we also identified an infrequent novel haplogroup, M16, that branched off directly from the Eurasian M founder type. Its nearly exclusive distribution in Tibetan populations and ancient age (>21 kya) suggest that M16 may represent the genetic relics of the Late Paleolithic inhabitants on the plateau. This partial genetic continuity between the Paleolithic inhabitants and the contemporary Tibetan populations bridges the results and inferences from archaeology, history, and genetics.
Data Availability
Data deposition: All of the sequences obtained in the present study have been deposited into GenBank, with accession numbers FJ544230-FJ544243, FJ968772-FJ968775, and GU014563-GU014569 (for whole mtDNA genomes) and FJ543469-FJ544148 (for control region sequences).
Acknowledgments.
We thank the volunteers for participating in the project. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30900797 and 30621092), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Special Grant for the President Scholarship Winner), the Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province, and the Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS (Special Grant for Young Researchers).
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Published in
Cover image: Pictured is a composite image of fossil marine plankton foraminifera on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Planktonic foraminifera, which accumulate in great abundance in some parts of the seafloor to form “calcareous ooze,” have been the subject of numerous studies on speciation in the fossil record. Pincelli M. Hull and Richard D. Norris find that the morphological similarity between closely related species and the morphometric techniques employed can greatly influence evolutionary interpretations. See the article by Hull and Norris on pages 21224–21229. Image courtesy of Pincelli M. Hull.
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Copyright
© 2009.
Data Availability
Data deposition: All of the sequences obtained in the present study have been deposited into GenBank, with accession numbers FJ544230-FJ544243, FJ968772-FJ968775, and GU014563-GU014569 (for whole mtDNA genomes) and FJ543469-FJ544148 (for control region sequences).
Submission history
Received: July 14, 2009
Published online: December 15, 2009
Published in issue: December 15, 2009
Keywords
Acknowledgments
We thank the volunteers for participating in the project. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (30900797 and 30621092), the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Special Grant for the President Scholarship Winner), the Natural Science Foundation of Yunnan Province, and the Kunming Institute of Zoology, CAS (Special Grant for Young Researchers).
Notes
This article is a PNAS Direct Submission.
This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0907844106/DCSupplemental.
Authors
Competing Interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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