Suchergebnisse

Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) is an area with a long history of human occupation and great ethnolinguistic diversity. The earliest anatomically modern humans arrived ~65 thousand years ago, while presently it has a population size of ~263 million people speaking ~229 languages belonging to five major language families: Austroasiatic (AA), Austronesian (AN), Tai-Kadai (TK), Hmong-Mien (HM), and Sino-Tibetan (ST). Analyses of genome-wide data can provide rich insights into reconstructing human genetic population history, but there is a paucity of genome-wide data from MSEA (mostly limited to the majority groups such as the Kinh and Thai). The goal of this thesis was to analyze newly-genotyped genome-wide data (encompassing ~600 thousand SNPs) from an extensive, detailed sample of ethnolinguistic groups from Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos, encompassing all five major MSEA language families, in order to reconstruct their genetic history and relationships with cultural variation. In Chapter I, I analyzed data from 259 individuals from the Kinh and 21 Vietnamese ethnolinguistic groups. In contrast to previous studies suggesting that genetic diversity in Vietnam largely reflects internal diversification and isolation, I found evidence for different sources of genetic diversity in different linguistic groups, extensive contact between groups, and a likely case of language shift involving AN-speaking groups. In Chapter II, I analyzed data from 463 individuals from 33 ethnolinguistic groups together with 3 published groups (including the Thai), hence in total 36 groups from Thailand and Laos. I found fine-scale genetic structure for the major TK and AA groups according to their linguistic branches, and different levels of local interaction with other linguistic groups in geographical proximity. This diverse structure was also influenced by South Asian admixture, detected in several different linguistic groups from central and southern Thailand, dated to ~600-1000 years ago. This admixture date, together with the geographical distribution of these groups, suggests that the South Asian influence corresponds to the Ayutthaya kingdom period (1350-1767 AD), when there was extensive interactions and political and trading networks between people from MSEA and South Asia.:SUMMARY p.1 ZUSAMMENFASSUNG p.10 CHAPTER I p.20 Extensive ethnolinguistic diversity in Vietnam reflects multiple sources of genetic diversity CHAPTER II p.68 Reconstructing the human genetic history of mainland Southeast Asia: insights from genome- wide data from Thailand and Laos REFERENCES p.111 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS p.114 CURRICULUM VITAE p.115 DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE p.117 AUTHOR CONTRIBUTION STATEMENT p.118

Abstract
The origin and dispersal of the Austronesian language family, one of the largest and most widespread in the world, have long attracted the attention of linguists, archaeologists, and geneticists. Even though there is a growing consensus that Taiwan is the source of the spread of Austronesian languages, little is known about the migration patterns of the early Austronesians who settled in and left Taiwan, i.e. the "Into-Taiwan" and "out-of-Taiwan" events. In particular, the genetic diversity and structure within Taiwan and how this relates to the into-/out-of-Taiwan events are largely unexplored, primarily because most genomic studies have largely utilized data from just two of the 16 recognized Highland Austronesian groups in Taiwan. In this study, we generated the largest genome-wide data set of Taiwanese Austronesians to date, including six Highland groups and one Lowland group from across the island and two Taiwanese Han groups. We identified fine-scale genomic structure in Taiwan, inferred the ancestry profile of the ancestors of Austronesians, and found that the southern Taiwanese Austronesians show excess genetic affinities with the Austronesians outside of Taiwan. Our findings thus shed new light on the Into- and Out-of-Taiwan dispersals.