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- Title
Testing the hypothesis of an ancient Roman soldier origin of the Liqian people in northwest China: a Y-chromosome perspective.
- Authors
Ruixia Zhou; Lizhe An; Xunling Wang; Wei Shao; Gonghua Lin; Weiping Yu; Lin Yi; Shijian Xu; Jiujin Xu; Xiaodong Xie
- Abstract
The Liqian people in north China are well known because of the controversial hypothesis of an ancient Roman mercenary origin. To test this hypothesis, 227 male individuals representing four Chinese populations were analyzed at 12 short tandem repeat (STR) loci and 12 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP). At the haplogroup levels, 77% Liqian Y chromosomes were restricted to East Asia. Principal component (PC) and multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis suggests that the Liqians are closely related to Chinese populations, especially Han Chinese populations, whereas they greatly deviate from Central Asian and Western Eurasian populations. Further phylogenetic and admixture analysis confirmed that the Han Chinese contributed greatly to the Liqian gene pool. The Liqian and the Yugur people, regarded as kindred populations with common origins, present an underlying genetic difference in a median-joining network. Overall, a Roman mercenary origin could not be accepted as true according to paternal genetic variation, and the current Liqian population is more likely to be a subgroup of the Chinese majority Han.
- Publication
Journal of Human Genetics, 2007, Vol 52, Issue 7, p584
- ISSN
1434-5161
- Publication type
Academic Journal
- DOI
10.1007/s10038-007-0155-0