Million-Year-Old Yunxian Cranium Reconstructed as Early Homo longi, Pushing Back the Origin of Our Lineage
2025年9月25日
Ancient Genomes from Central Mongolia: A Millennium of Coexistence Between Distinct Bronze Age Herder Groups, Ended by the Slab Grave Expansion
2025年9月29日First Large-Scale Ancient Nuclear Genome Dataset of East Asian Domestic Pigs Released by Peking University
A Peking University team has sequenced 21 ancient pig nuclear genomes from 14 sites across China, spanning about 8,000 to 800 years ago, producing the first large-scale ancient nuclear genome dataset for East Asian domestic pigs. Peking University’s School of Life Sciences announced the research progress on 26 September.
The study confirms that northern China—not the southwest—was the domestication origin of modern East Asian domestic pigs, ruling out the competing southwest-origin hypothesis. The data also show that pigs developed a black coat after becoming closely associated with humans.
Notably, pigs domesticated in the north spread southward with millet farmers along the Yellow River into the Yangtze basin and the southwest, interbreeding with local wild boar along the way. The dispersal trajectory closely mirrors the migration of human agriculturalists. Spanning eight millennia, the dataset links animal domestication, agricultural origins, and human movement into a single window onto East Asia’s prehistoric economy.
