Major Population Expansion of East Asians Began before Neolithic Time: Evidence

[sahaliyan]

Hong-Xiang Zheng et al
Abstract
It is a major question in archaeology and anthropology whether human populations started to grow primarily after the advent of agriculture, i.e., the Neolithic time, especially in East Asia, which was one of the centers of ancient agricultural civilization. To answer this question requires an accurate estimation of the time of lineage expansion as well as that of population expansion in a population sample without ascertainment bias. In this study, we analyzed all available mtDNA genomes of East Asians ascertained by random sampling, a total of 367 complete mtDNA sequences generated by the 1000 Genome Project, including 249 Chinese (CHB, CHD, and CHS) and 118 Japanese (JPT). We found that major mtDNA lineages underwent expansions, all of which, except for two JPT-specific lineages, including D4, D4b2b, D4a, D4j, D5a2a, A, N9a, F1a1'4, F2, B4, B4a, G2a1 and M7b1'2'4, occurred before 10 kya, i.e., before the Neolithic time (symbolized by Dadiwan Culture at 7.9 kya) in East Asia. Consistent to this observation, the further analysis showed that the population expansion in East Asia started at 13 kya and lasted until 4 kya. The results suggest that the population growth in East Asia constituted a need for the introduction of agriculture and might be one of the driving forces that led to the further development of agriculture.

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0025835

[sahaliyan]

One thing to note,the Dadiwan culture(located in Gansu) belonged to northern Microlithic traditions before the agricultural revolution,the agricultural revolution seems began in Yangtse river of southern China.Where are those northern farmers came from?Came from south or local Microlithic population adopted farming?Also the northern farmers are millet farmers,not rice farmers like the farmers of southern China

[Valikhan]

One thing to note,the Dadiwan culture(located in Gansu) belonged to northern Microlithic traditions before the agricultural revolution,the agricultural revolution seems began in Yangtse river of southern China.Where are those northern farmers came from?Came from south or local Microlithic population adopted farming?Also the northern farmers are millet farmers,not rice farmers like the farmers of southern China

Do not you think they could develop agriculture independently? Millet is not rice, very different in terms of technique. Also, high diversity of wild millet is in Mongolia/Northern China, as far as I remember.

[sahaliyan]

One thing to note,the Dadiwan culture(located in Gansu) belonged to northern Microlithic traditions before the agricultural revolution,the agricultural revolution seems began in Yangtse river of southern China.Where are those northern farmers came from?Came from south or local Microlithic population adopted farming?Also the northern farmers are millet farmers,not rice farmers like the farmers of southern China

Do not you think they could develop agriculture independently? Millet is not rice, very different in terms of technique. Also, high diversity of wild millet is in Mongolia/Northern China, as far as I remember.

Barton et al 2009 talked about this issue
http://ukpmc.ac.uk/articles/PMC2667055/reload=0;jsessionid=4B3292EE78D45684FABF0DB025AB61F7
The early Holocene climate of northwest China was episodically harsh enough (38, 39) to encourage short-term use of low-return plants by hunter–gatherers living in north China's more marginal environments. Severe cold-dry intervals like the hemispheric climatic anomaly at 8,200 calBP (40) may have forced some living in the deserts on either side of the upper Huang He to move southward into the western Loess Plateau (17). Evidence for this is particularly compelling at Dadiwan. Phase 1 microblades and microblade cores made from exotic raw materials are entirely without precedent in local lithic technology, suggesting that the earliest food producers at Dadiwan were immigrant hunter–gatherers from the arid north where this microlithic technology is common (41, 42).