Genetics of East Asians

Introduction

This article looks at the internal genetics when contrast to the external genetics in the article 'Subraces of East Asians' in this blog.

Types of genetic tests

1. Haplogroup test

There are two types of haplogroups that gives clues to your ancestors - Y and Mt.

Y-DNA

The Y-DNA is inherited from father side but it only gives a small percentage of your direct male ancestors (blue colored boxes) because men can have only one Y haplogroup.

For example, a male person can't have three haplogroups such as (80% of O3, 10% of O2, 10% of O1) because each male can only have exactly one Y haplogroup. A women does not have a Y haplogroup so she has to look at her brother's or father's Y haplogroup.

Mt-DNA

The Mt-DNA is inherited from direct female ancestors but it only gives a small percentage of your female ancestors (red colored boxes) because a male person can have exactly one Mt haplogroup whereas a female person can have two Mt-DNA.

2. Autosomal DNA test

Autosomal DNA test is different from haplogroup test because it compares your autosomal chromosomes with other people - paternally and maternally, direct or indirect ancestors.

Autosomal DNA tests is more accurate for mixed-race children because it can estimate ethnicity percentage by comparing with different ethnic groups.

Relationship between haplogroups and language families

Traditionally, the haplogroups largely correspond to language families except for a few such as Turkic. A patrilineal society follows the Y haplogroup whereas a matrilineal society follows the mt-DNA haplogroup if there are marriages outside their tribes.

Language family here means your original language and not your adopted language.

For example, the Tai Ahom speaks the adopted language of Indo-Aryan but their original language is Tai. Another example is ethnic Chinese in Thailand who adopted the Thai language but their original language is Chinese. So one has to trace and determine your original language.

While genetic marker such as haplogroups are reliable for distinguishing different races/subraces, they are less reliable for distinguishing different ethnicity of the same race/subrace; for example, distinguishing a German from an Anglo-Saxon when both are Germanic people. This require a database set where the length and number of similar chromosomes are compared. An analogy is that your siblings would share more chromosomes with you than your first cousins etc.

Haplogroup O

The haplogroup O are the haplogroups of the Southeast Asians and the Central East Asians as shown below.

The haplogroup naming convention is layered by numbering, the further right the digit is, the smaller the genetic variation and physical differences. Thus, the Southeast Asian and Central East Asian differ by the second digit (O1 and O2); the Austronesian and Austroasiatic differ by the third digit (O1a and O1b) and so on.

The Kra-Dai physical phenotype is similar to Central East Asian rather than Southeast Asian implying a mixed race.

Haplogroup C

Surprisingly, the Northeast Asians such as Turkic, Mongolic and Tungusic do not belong to the O haplogroup. The original haplogroup of the Altaic northeast Asians is haplogroup C2.

We could not find a detailed and reliable paper written by a respectable scholar of the C subclades (subgroup of haplogroup) of each language family yet unlike the O haplogroup.

So the chart above is just preliminary (not final) and will be updated in the future once more reliable data is found.

A certain percentage of Turkic people (who are of Middle Eastern & European origin) adopted the Turkic language so are not considered the original Turkic people as the original Turkic people have haplogroup C.

Haplogroup D

The Negritos share physical features including short stature, very dark skin, crinkly hair and sometimes steatopygia (large amount of buttocks tissues) with African pygmies.

A great percentage (more than 80%) of these people below have haplogroup D which is the original haplogroup of the Negritos.

The Negritos are found in very small numbers (around 1% of the population) in the following places. The map below shows their most probable migration path in ancient times.

Migration path of Negritos

The Negrito branches are

1. Kusunda of the Himalayan mountains

2. Andamese of Andamese islands

3. Mani of southern Thailand

4. Semang people of West Malaysia

5. Aeta & Ati of Philippines

6. Emishi (Ainu) of Japanese islands

Kusunda has been reclassified as an Indo-Pacific (supposedly language of the Negrito) language by linguist Merritt Ruhlen. Misidentification of Kusunda people who lives in Himalayan mountains as 'Tibetan-Burmese' people have resulted in the D haplogroup being erroneously assigned to the Tibetan-Burmese people by some people

The Kusunda have been forced to intermarry with people from other tribes due to their own dwindling population and diminished forest land for hunting. Kusunda means 'savage' in the Nepali language.

There are actually three traditional haplogroups in the Tibetan-Qinghai Plateau and Himalayan mountains. The origin of Mongour can be found in this blog.

Ethnic group	Haplogroup	Language Family
Kusunda	D	Negrito
Tibetan-Burmese	O	Sino-Tibetan
Mongour	C	Mongolic

Many people who are not aware of the ethnolinguistic history of the Tibetan-Qinghai plateau have been giving incorrect genetic information.

The earliest natives in Japan are the Negritos, some of the Ainu have crinkly hair, small stature, brown skin which provides physical evidence that they were originally Negritos. They are the Emishi (蝦夷) people who were recorded in Chinese history texts.

The haplogroup C2 is also found in a certain percentage of Ainu people but these are Northeast Asians (probably Okhotsk people who came from Kuril islands) who migrated to Japan at a much later date than the Negritos. These two different tribes (Emishi and Ainu) are now grouped under the same ethnic group called Ainu and their different origins are now confused with each other.

Haplogroup E

Haplogroup D's closest haplogroup is E which is the haplogroup of Africans such as the Nigerian. The similarities of their external appearance proves that the D haplogroup is an ancient haplogroup closely related to the Africans.

The Negritos were the first batch of people to migrate to Southeast Asia and Japan but their numbers are very small when compared to the haplogroup O people which came much later to East Asia.

As can be seen from the chart above, haplogroups A and B are the oldest haplogroups on earth whose people are of African physical appearance. Haplogroups D and E are the next oldest African haplogroups which did not mutate much from A and B.

Limitations of genetic testing

Most genetic companies use Autosomal DNA but the pitfall of this method is that it depends on

the size of their database of a certain ethnic group (reference population)
their knowledge of the ethnic groups of that country
their algorithms to match chromosomes

Due to the above factors, different genetic companies (Ancestry, 23andMe, Family Tree DNA, MyHeritage) will show different results for the same individual which provides further evidence that genetic reports are not 100% accurate.

23andMe and Ancestry are more accurate for European ancestry whereas Mofang and Wegene are more accurate for East Asian ancestry. Watch the videos below.

The video below shows that the percentages are just estimates and not exact.

Even twins/triplets can have 'different ancestors' by the same genetics company which shows that it is not foolproof. Watch the video below.

Conclusion

DNA reports shouldn't be taken as the only evidence to determine the origin of a group of people due to its many limitations. It must be supported by other evidences such as the legend of their origin, written history, migration history, language spoken, culture and facial features etc.

It is best to have your genetics tested individually to confirm for yourself your Y haplogroup first; and then the two largest ethnicity percentages. The smaller percentages (less than 5%) are just estimates and do not mean anything.

Do not believe in some of those possibly unreliable and misleading charts done by nationalists and/or propagandists. In most of those cases, these people did not conduct the ethnicity test correctly (thinking all people in the same country are of the same ethnicity or misidentify ethnicity) or did not interpret the results correctly (thinking that a single person can have more than one Y haplogroup etc.).

Sources

Munda languages are father tongues but Japanese and Korean are not. By George Van Driem and Gyaneshwer Chauber.
Correlation Between Genetic Structure and Linguistic Phylogeny in East Asia. By Yunzhi Huang and Hui Li
Inferring human history in East Asia from Y chromosomes. By Wang and Li
Origin of ethnic groups, linguistic families, and civilizations in China viewed from Y chromosome. By Hui Li

Last updated: 19 Sept 2022

East Asian origin, history, language, culture

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