Department of Biochemistry, College of Medicine & Health Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Muscat, Oman.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2012 Oct;149(2):291-8. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.22131. Epub 2012 Aug 24.
It is now known that several population movements have taken place at different times throughout southern Arabian prehistory. One of the principal questions under debate is if the Early Holocene peopling of southern Arabia was mainly due to input from the Levant during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B, to the expansion of an autochthonous population, or some combination of these demographic processes. Since previous genetic studies have not been able to include all parts of southern Arabia, we have helped fill this lacuna by collecting new population datasets from Oman (Dhofar) and Yemen (Al-Mahra and Bab el-Mandab). We identified several new haplotypes belonging to haplogroup R2 and generated its whole genome mtDNA tree with age estimates undertaken by different methods. R2, together with other considerably frequent southern Arabian mtDNA haplogroups (R0a, HV1, summing up more than 20% of the South Arabian gene pool) were used to infer the past effective population size through Bayesian skyline plots. These data indicate that the southern Arabian population underwent a large expansion already some 12 ka. A founder analysis of these haplogroups shows that this expansion is largely attributed to demographic input from the Near East. These results support thus the spread of a population coming from the north, but at a significantly earlier date than presently considered by archaeologists. Our data suggest that some of the mtDNA lineages found in southern Arabia have persisted in the region since the end of the Last Ice Age.
现在已经知道，在阿拉伯半岛南部的史前历史的不同时期发生了几次人口迁移。其中一个主要的争议问题是，在全新世早期，阿拉伯半岛南部的人口是否主要是由于新石器时代早期 B 期来自黎凡特的移民，还是由于当地人口的扩张，或者是这些人口过程的某种组合。由于之前的遗传研究未能包括阿拉伯半岛的所有地区，我们通过从阿曼（佐法尔）和也门（马哈拉和巴布勒曼丹）收集新的人口数据集，帮助填补了这一空白。我们确定了几个属于 R2 单倍群的新单倍型，并通过不同的方法生成了带有年龄估计的 R2 全基因组 mtDNA 树。R2 与其他相当常见的阿拉伯半岛南部 mtDNA 单倍群（R0a、HV1，占阿拉伯半岛南部基因库的 20%以上）一起，通过贝叶斯天空线图推断过去的有效人口规模。这些数据表明，阿拉伯半岛南部人口已经在大约 12 千年前经历了一次大规模扩张。对这些单倍群的创始人分析表明，这种扩张在很大程度上归因于来自近东的人口输入。因此，这些结果支持了来自北方的人口的传播，但时间比考古学家目前认为的要早得多。我们的数据表明，在末次冰期结束后，一些在阿拉伯半岛南部发现的 mtDNA 谱系在该地区一直存在。
