Ning Chao, Zheng Hong-Xiang, Zhang Fan, Wu Sihao, Li Chunxiang, Zhao Yongbin, Xu Yang, Wei Dong, Wu Yong, Gao Shizhu, Jin Li, Cui Yinqiu
School of Life Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, Jena, Germany.
Front Genet. 2021 Sep 22;12:740167. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.740167. eCollection 2021.
The population prehistory of Xinjiang has been a hot topic among geneticists, linguists, and archaeologists. Current ancient DNA studies in Xinjiang exclusively suggest an admixture model for the populations in Xinjiang since the early Bronze Age. However, almost all of these studies focused on the northern and eastern parts of Xinjiang; the prehistoric demographic processes that occurred in western Xinjiang have been seldomly reported. By analyzing complete mitochondrial sequences from the Xiabandi (XBD) cemetery (3,500-3,300 BP), the up-to-date earliest cemetery excavated in western Xinjiang, we show that all the XBD mitochondrial sequences fall within two different West Eurasian mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) pools, indicating that the migrants into western Xinjiang from west Eurasians were a consequence of the early expansion of the middle and late Bronze Age steppe pastoralists (Steppe_MLBA), admixed with the indigenous populations from Central Asia. Our study provides genetic links for an early existence of the Indo-Iranian language in southwestern Xinjiang and suggests that the existence of Andronovo culture in western Xinjiang involved not only the dispersal of ideas but also population movement.
新疆的人口史前史一直是遗传学家、语言学家和考古学家们热议的话题。目前新疆的古DNA研究一致表明，自青铜时代早期以来，新疆地区的人群存在混合模式。然而，几乎所有这些研究都集中在新疆的北部和东部；关于新疆西部发生的史前人口过程的报道却很少。通过分析新疆西部迄今发掘的最早的墓地——下坂地（XBD）墓地（距今3500 - 3300年）中的完整线粒体序列，我们发现所有XBD线粒体序列都属于两个不同的西欧亚线粒体DNA（mtDNA）谱系，这表明从西欧亚迁入新疆西部的人群是青铜时代中晚期草原牧民（Steppe_MLBA）早期扩张的结果，并与来自中亚的当地人群发生了混合。我们的研究为印欧语系在新疆西南部的早期存在提供了基因联系，并表明新疆西部安德罗诺沃文化的存在不仅涉及思想传播，还涉及人口迁移。
