Bronze-Age Co-Burials at Dongshantou, Jilin: Ancient Genomes Reveal Patrilineality and Female Exogamy
2026年2月10日
The Jomon Were Not Multiple Migrations: Whole-Mitogenome Evidence for a Single Initial Settlement Followed by Insular Divergence
2026年2月16日Ladakh Ancient Genomes: Three Millennia of Tibetan, South Asian, and Central Asian Admixture along the Northwestern Himalaya
On the northwestern edge of the Himalaya, ancient cave burials and the Humu mound site in India’s Ladakh preserve a long-overlooked history of population fusion. A preprint released in February 2026 reports genome-wide analysis of ancient individuals from the region.
Over the past roughly three millennia, the people of Ladakh underwent dynamic admixture among Tibetan-related, South Asian, and Central Asian ancestry. Tibetan-related ancestry has been integrated into Ladakh populations for at least 1,500 years, while the initial admixture event occurred around 2,000–2,300 years ago.
From the northwestern Himalaya, the findings add complementary evidence on the southward and westward spread of Tibetan-related groups and on the exchange of genes linked to high-altitude adaptation. Note that Ladakh lies on the western Himalayan, Indian side, some distance from the East Asian core, and that this is a non-peer-reviewed preprint, flagged as such here.
Source: Niraj Rai, Bhavna et al. bioRxiv preprint, 2026-02-01.
