American Journal of Physical Anthropology doi:10.1002/ajpa.21350
A mitochondrial revelation of early human migrations to the
Tibetan Plateau before and after the last glacial maximum
Zhendong Qin et al. As the highest plateau surrounded by
towering mountain ranges, the Tibetan Plateau was once
considered to be one of the last populated areas of modern
humans. However, this view has been tremendously changed by
archeological, linguistic, and genetic findings in the past 60
years. Nevertheless, the timing and routes of entry of modern
humans into the Tibetan Plateau is still unclear. To make these
problems clear, we carried out high-resolution mitochondrial-DNA
(mtDNA) analyses on 562 Tibeto-Burman inhabitants from nine
different regions across the plateau. By examining the mtDNA
haplogroup distributions and their principal components, we
demonstrated that maternal diversity on the plateau reflects
mostly a northern East Asian ancestry. Furthermore,
phylogeographic analysis of plateau-specific sublineages based