Many East Asians are closely related to people who lived in the same region nearly 8,000 years ago, suggesting that little human migration has occurred in the area since then.
Agriculture emerged in East Asia more than 8,000 years ago, but it has not been clear whether the first farmers were related to earlier hunter-gatherers from the same region or to farmers who moved in from elsewhere. Veronika Siska at the University of Cambridge, UK, and her team sequenced partial genomes from 7,700-year-old remains of two women found at Devil's Gate, a cave in southeastern Russia near the border with China and North Korea. Comparisons of the genomes with those of contemporary Asians showed that the women shared ancestry with Korean and Japanese people, and were most closely related to the Ulchi, an indigenous population living near Devil's Gate.
The authors suggest that farming developed gradually in this region and that the harsh climate limited later migrations.
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Early farmers in Asia stayed local. Nature 542, 140 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/542140b
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/542140b
