The demic diffusion of Han culture into the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau inferred from ancient genomes

Abstract

The demic diffusion of Han culture into the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau inferred from ancient genomes Kongyang Zhu1 ,2 ,† , Changguo Hu3 ,† , Meiqing Yang1 ,† , Xinglong Zhang3 ,† , Jianxin Guo4 , Mingxia Xie1 , Xiaomin Yang4 , Hao Ma2 , Rui Wang2 , Jing Zhao4 , Le Tao2 , Haifeng He2 , Wen Wan1 , Qun Zhang5 , Li Jin6 ,7 , Yunjie Zuo3 , ∗ , Bisu Zhou3 , ∗ , Jiang Huang1 , ∗ and Chuan-Chao Wang2 ,4 ,7 , ∗ According to the historical records of Records of the Grand Historian ( ) and genomic evidence, the Han Chinese could trace their ancestry back to the Huaxia tribe, people who lived along the Yellow River basin since Neolithic times [1]. From this region, Han culture spread west into the Tibetan Plateau and south into southwest China over the past two millennia. For the Han population, on the one hand, evidence from classical genetic markers and microsatellites observed the differentiated groups between northern Han and southern Han, seeming to support the culture diffusion model of Han expansion [2,3]. On the other hand, archaeological and genomic studies show that the millet agricultural population originated in the Yellow River basin area and expanded outward ∼5400 years ago [4], which not only spread millet agriculture but also contributed to the formation of presentday Sino-Tibetan–speaking populations in this region [5,6]. The study based on Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from modern Han populations also suggests that the massive movement of the northern Han resulted in the demographic expansion of Han populations and their culture [7]. Moreover, the previous study of ancient genomics from Gaoshan and Haimenkou sites also supports the co-diffusion model of millet farming culture and population from the Yellow River basin into the