Northern Asia is a place that is extremely interesting from the point of view of genetics. Already in deep ancient times, Europeoid and Mongoloid races met there and their contacts are evidenced by the formation of racial type of significant proportion of Eurasian population. Beside that, the oldest populations of this region also participated in populating America.. To reconstruct a holistic model of the processes of population of Northern Asia and America, specialists of the Institute of Biological Problems of the North of DVO RAN spent several years analyzing the structure and variety of mitochondrial DNA sequencing of various ethnic groups of Eurasia and America. Their research was supported by grants from RFFI and DVO RAN.
Analysis of mitochondrial sequencing permits evaluation of relationships between various ethnic groups and about the time of origin of these groups. The research involved several thousand representatives of 27 ethnic groups: Siberian peoples speaking Altaic languages, as well as Koryaks, Chukchi, Koreans, Indo-Aryan, Eastern Iranians and Tadzhiks. To evaluate the contribution of East European nations, the scientists studied the rate of change of mitochondrial DNA in several populations.
The West Eurasia populations have a characteristic sequencing of mtDNA, and those of Eastern Eurasia have another. All the research groups of North and East Asia have predominantly east Eurasian sequences, but the Western type is occasionally seen; the frequency of this decreases from West to East. It is maximal in the Altaians at 33.4%, but no West European sequences at all have been discovered in Koreans.
Europeoids have appeared in Siberia no earlier that 14 thousand years ago, and came, most likely, from Western Asia and Transcaucasia.
The existing variety of the ethnic groups of North Asia originated about 12 - 20 thousand years ago. The researched Asian ethnic groups can be divided into five groups as based on the differences and similarities in mitochondrial DNA:
- Kalmyks, Buryats, Khamigans, Barguts, Mongols and Soyots;
- Tuvans, Todzhans, Evenks and Yakuts;
- Telengits, Altai Kazakhs and ethnic groups of Central Asia;
- Koreans and Northern Chinese;
- Persians and Kurds.
The first colonizers turned out to be Barguts and Buryats, populating the southern mountainous belt of Siberia about 43-33 thousand years ago, during Small Warming period. Then the climate became colder again, and the climate of South Siberia and more northern territories evened out; the Paleolithic people settled on the Central Siberian plateau, then on the North-East Asian mountain ranges.
The northernmost Paleolithic encampment, discovered above the Arctic Circle, in the area of Lower Yana river, is about 30 thousand years old. However, the mitochondrial DNA of current peoples of this region, the Yakuts and Evenks, do not have the sequences suggestive of the first settlers. Therefore they are not direct descendants of the Paleolithic population of North Siberia.
It is known that people came to America from Asia. Judging from the mitochondrial DNA sequencing, it was the people from the Altai-Sayan and Baikal regions that migrated there. They crossed Behringia to the other continent about 16 - 20 thousand years ago. However, a part of the migrants remained in western Behringia, and became the ancestors of today's Chukchi and Eskimos.
