Mongoloid - Genetic Research

Genetic Research

In 1994, geneticist Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford University divided a principal coordinant map of 42 Asian populations into three groupings: Asian Caucasoids, Northeast and East Asian and Southeast Asian. Along Southeast Asia, Cavalli-Sforza said there is a separation between northern and southern Mongoloids. To the West, Cavalli-Sforza said there is an approximate boundary between Caucasoids and Mongoloids from the Urals to the eastern part of India. Along this boundary there has been hybridization, causing a Caucasoid-Mongoloid gradient. More specifically, the ethnic groups Cavalli-Sforza said were in the Northeast and East Asian cluster were the Koryak, Chukchi, Reindeer Chukchi, Nganasan Samoyed, Northern Tungus, Nentsy, Northern Chinese, Tibetan, Bhutanese, Ainu, Mongol, Japanese and Korean. Moving south, the ethnic groups Cavalli-Sforza said were in the Southeast Asian cluster were the Indonesian, Malaysian, Taiwan aborigines, Muong people, Thai, Filipino, Southern Chinese, Balinese and Gurkha. Another study showed Southern Chinese being an intermediate between East Asian and Southeast Asian but clustering closer to Southeast Asian. Moving off the coast, Cavalli-Sforza said there are Australoid and Negrito peoples, but also that the Polynesians are a diluted Mongoloid type, the Negritos of the Andaman Islands and Semang Negritos have a high frequency of the Mongoloid inner epicanthic eyefold and that among Australoid Micronesians some individuals look more Mongoloid. Moving to the Americas, Cavalli-Sforza said the Eskimos and Aleuts derived from the Siberian Mongoloids and came after the American Indians who are both Mongoloid in general and uniform racially.

In 2008, biochemist Boris Abramovich Malyarchuk (Russian: Борис Абрамович Малярчук) et al. of the Institute of Biological Problems of the North, Russian Academy of Sciences, Magadan, Russia, used a sample (n=279) of Czech individuals to determine the frequency of Mongoloid mtDNA lineages. Malyarchuk found Czech mtDNA lineages were typical of Slavic populations with 1.8% Mongoloid mtDNA lineage. Malyarchuk added that Slavic populations almost always contain Mongoloid mtDNA lineage. Malyarchuk said the Mongoloid component of Slavic people was partially added before the split of Balto-Slavics in 2,000–3,000 BCE with additional Mongoloid mixture occurring among Slavics in the last 4,000 years. Malyarchuk said the Russian population was developed by the assimilation of the indigenous pre-Slavic population of Eastern Europe by true Slavs with additional assimilation of Finno-Ugric populations and long-lasting interactions with the populations of Siberia and Central Asia. Malyarchuk said that other Slavs Mongoloid component was increased during the waves of migration from steppe populations (Huns, Avars, Bulgars and Mongols), especially the decay of the Avar Khaganate.

In 1999, Vladimir Orekhov (Russian: Владимир Орехов) et al. of the Institute of General Genetics, Moscow, Russia, found that there is evidence for influence of Mongoloid populations on the ethnogenesis of Russians due to the presence of mytotypes 26, 33, and 47 of Mongoloid haplogroup C in the Russian population as well as evidence for Finno-Ugric populations in the ethnogenesis of Eastern Slavs due to the presence of Finno-Ugric mitotype (mitotype 31) in the Russian population, but he found that that Russian mtDNA pools differed by Russian regions with Russians of the Eastern-European plain close to European ethnic groups.

Atsushi Tajima (Japanese: 田嶋敦) et al. of Graduate University for Advanced Studies, Hayama, Kanagawa, Japan, found evidence for four separate populations, carrying distinct sets of non-recombining Y chromosome lineages, within the traditional Mongoloid category: North Asians, Han Chinese, Southeast Asians, and Japanese.

In 1997, Masatoshi Nei (Japanese: 根井正利), Professor of Biology at Pennsylvania State University, said clusters of genetic distances conform to the customary three major races of man, namely, Negroids, Caucasoids and Mongoloids. Moreover, Nei said that Mongoloid populations irrespective of north and south show small genetic distances from any populations in Oceania and Americas. Nei said the Northern Mongoloid included the Evens, Buryat, Hui, Mongolian, Tibetan, Japanese, Ainu, Northern Chinese and Korean. In the Southern Mongoloid, Nei included the Dong, Zhuang, Southern Chinese, Taiwanese-aborigines, Thai, Indonesian and Filipino. Based on genetic data, Nei said the Amerindians descend from two populations: an original Northeast Asians migration which became the Paleo-Indian and a later migration which became both the Na-Dene and Eskimos. Based on the genetic data, Nei said Southeast Asian Mongoloids are closer to the Micronesian and Polynesian than to the Papuan and Australian. In 1993, Nei said the Mongoloids were contained within a larger genetic grouping called the Greater Asians or Greater Mongoloids which also included Pacific Islanders and Australopapuans. In the Australopapuan grouping, Nei included Dravidians, Andamanese, Australian, Papuan and Philippine Negritos. Since Nei found Australopapuans were most closely related to East Asians, Nei offered an explanation for their peculiar traits. Nei rejected the hypothesis that Australopapuans have traits of black Africans due to convergent-evolution, since he estimated it would have taken far longer for them to have re-evolved frizzled-hair. Nei supported the other hypothesis put forward by Chris B. Stringer of the Paleontology Department of the Natural History Museum that there were two populations and that the original African population had absorbed most of its gene pool from the Mongoloid group.

Satoshi Horai (Japanese: 宝来聡) of the Japanese National Institute of Genetics, said phylogenetic analysis indicated that the there are two distinct groups of Mongoloids – one which early on diverged from Negroids and another that diverged from Caucasoids later. Horai said Mongoloid distribution corresponds to North and South America, Oceania, Southeast Asia, east Asia, and Siberia.

A study conducted by the HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium in 2009 used principal components analysis, which makes no prior population assumptions, on genetic data sampled from a large number of points across Asia. They found that East Asian and South-East Asian populations clustered together, and suggested a common origin for these populations. At the same time they observed a broad discontinuity between this cluster and South Asia, commenting most of the Indian populations showed evidence of shared ancestry with European populations. It was noted that genetic ancestry is strongly correlated with linguistic affiliations as well as geography.

In 2010, Sung-Soo Hung et al. (Korean:윤승수) of the Department of Biology at Seoul National University found that Mongoloids were relatively homogenous in 9-bp deletion type of the mtDNA COM/ tRNALys intergenic region.