Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Ancient genome reveals how people immigrated to Japan from Korea

Amazing stuff! Japan with substantial Korean ancestry!

Given the long and brutal occupation of Korea by Japan between 1910-1945, this is particularly noteworthy.

"Japan has been inhabited by people since about 35,000 years ago. Roughly 16,500 years ago a group of Neolithic hunter-gatherers, referred to as the “Jomon” culture, developed a complex society including the production of pottery and jewellery.

About 3,000 years ago, rice cultivation in paddy fields was introduced to Japan. This saw the beginning of the Yayoi period which ended around the year 300 CE. After the Yayoi came the Kofun period (300–538 CE).

The new research ... sought to understand the population dynamics behind this shift. ...

“There were various hypotheses to explain the history of the Japanese,” ...
“For example, the ‘transformation model’ posits that only culture, not people, came from the continent.
The ‘replacement model’ suggests a complete replacement of indigenous Jomon people by the Yayoi people, while
the ‘hybridization model’ proposes admixture between indigenous Jomon people and continental immigrants.” ...

the current consensus based on DNA evidence from modern Japanese people is that there was 2 or 3-way mixing between the indigenous Jomon people and 1 or 2 other sources of immigration to the archipelago during the Yayoi and Kofun periods. ...

Among modern populations, the Yayoi genome most closely resembled – apart from modern Japanese people – Korean populations. ..."

"A joint research group ... has demonstrated that the majority of immigration to the Japanese Archipelago in the Yayoi and Kofun periods came from the Korean Peninsula. ..."

From the abstract:
"Mainland Japanese have been recognized as having dual ancestry, originating from indigenous Jomon people and immigrants from continental East Eurasia. Although migration from the continent to the Japanese Archipelago continued from the Yayoi to the Kofun period, our understanding of these immigrants, particularly their origins, remains insufficient due to the lack of high-quality genome samples from the Yayoi period, complicating predictions about the admixture process. To address this, we sequenced the whole nuclear genome of a Yayoi individual from the Doigahama site in Yamaguchi prefecture, Japan. A comprehensive population genetic analysis of the Doigahama Yayoi individual, along with ancient and modern populations in East Asia and Northeastern Eurasia, revealed that the Doigahama Yayoi individual, similar to Kofun individuals and modern Mainland Japanese, had three distinct genetic ancestries: Jomon-related, East Asian-related, and Northeastern Siberian-related. Among non-Japanese populations, the Korean population, possessing both East Asian-related and Northeastern Siberian-related ancestries, exhibited the highest degree of genetic similarity to the Doigahama Yayoi individual. The analysis of admixture modeling for Yayoi individuals, Kofun individuals, and modern Japanese respectively supported a two-way admixture model assuming Jomon-related and Korean-related ancestries. These results suggest that between the Yayoi and Kofun periods, the majority of immigrants to the Japanese Archipelago originated primarily from the Korean Peninsula."

Ancient genome reveals how people immigrated to Japan

Traces of ancient immigration patterns to Japan found in 2000-year-old genome (original news release) "Genetic analysis of an individual from the Yayoi period reveals immigration patterns from the Korean Peninsula"

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