Migration history of the Chinese population

Fig. 3 Samples and haplogroups distribution and hypothesized migration routes in China. Chinese ethnical subgroups:Diamond,subgroup Tibet;Circle, subgroup North;Upward  triangle, sub-group  West; Downward   triangle,  subgroup  West;  andStar,Majority Han. Haplogroups:Black, haplogroup D;Blue, haplo-group C;Yellow, haplogroup O1;Red, haplogroup O*; andGreen,haplogroup L, P.Arrows : hypothesized original migration routes of Chinese population mentioned in ‘‘Results and discussion

According to government statistics, 93% of Chinese belong to the ethnic majority Han, and the additional 55 officially recognized minorities together account for the remaining 7% (see Cavalli-Sforza 1998 for a review). In the historical past, however, the Han were less dominant, and many of the ethnic minorities were more numerically significant. Some ethnic minori- ties are believed to have played important roles in East Asian migration waves: Hun and Turks have succes- sively pastured in North China; Mongolian and Man- chu, coming from the north and northeast of China, have  dominated  China  empires;  Di-Qiang  had  an important active role as nomads in the west of China; Yi and Bai were once rulers of southwestern China; Miao, originating with Han from the Central Plain, dispersed to the whole of South China (Li 1987; Ge et al. 1997; Fei 1999)

Studies of the geographical and ethnical structure of phylogeny lead to the well-known ‘‘out-of-Africa’’ hypothesis of modern human evolution and the subsequent peopling of the entire world. New binary markers allow for the construction of more robust genetic phylogenies than befor

The history of the Chinese 5,000-year civilization is a history  of  diverse  ethnical  admixture.  The  genetic structure of the Chinese population is a rich contem- porary paternal gene pool that helped to further uncover the trails of the eastern Asian population history and the ongoing  demographic  processes. However, previous studies had relatively few Chinese subjects, and little information on intra-Chinese events can be deduced from them (Su et al. 1999, 2000).

the 33 Chinese ethnical minorities in our survey were divided into the following four subgroups: North, Tibet, West, and South.

J Hum Genet. 2004;49(7):339-48. Epub 2004 Jun 2.