The Homelands Of Modern Asian Languages And Y-DNA Clades

Half a dozen paternal lines that expanded dramatically ca. 4800 BCE to 3000 BCE and now account for 65% of the population of China.  Each of these paternal lines had origins in a distinct archaeological cultures, and each of them correspond fairly closely to one or two modern language families in the region. 

The Neolithic transition, defined as the shift from a hunter-gatherer economy into the one based on agricultural activities, is assumed to have resulted in extensive human population growths. Despite major progress has been made by archaeologists in the use of archaeobotanic data to reconstruct a reliable time frame of Neolithic transition in China, the roles played by Neolithic transition in East Asian demographic history are not yet well understood. This paper offers a perspective on the issues regarding when and how the East Asian population expanded and its consequences. 

Considering diverse genetic evidences, we revealed that, in East Asia, there were at least two population expansion events in the Paleolithic Era and notably, the latter Paleolithic expansion and climate improvement after Last Glacial Maximum (LGM, about 15 ka) might together facilitate the emergence of agriculture. 

In comparison to the Paleolithic expansion, Neolithic expansion had its own characteristics, such as stronger expansion dynamics and sex-specific expansion pattern. According to the Y-chromosome-based tree in our recent studies, we found strong signals of partial paternal lineage expansions during or after the Neolithic transition, for instance, O3a2c1a-F5 (Oα), O3a2c1-F46 (Oβ), O3a1c1-F11 (Oγ), C3a1-F2613 (Cα), Q1a1-M120 (Qα), and O1a1a1-F78 (Oδ), suggesting the influence of a strong bottleneck caused by cultural changes. 

Finally, we discussed the relationship between major East Asian paternal lineages and linguistic families, as well as early archeology cultures, linking the Daxi culture to the modern Hmong-Mien populations, the Liangzhu Culture and/or Songze Culture to modern Austronesian and Daic populations, and Yangshao Culture, Dawenkou Culture and/or Longshan Culture, and Hongshan Culture to modern Sino-Tibetan populations.

Shao-Qing Wen, Xin-Zhu Tong, and Hui Li, "

Y-chromosome-based genetic pattern in East Asia affected by Neolithic transition" 426 Quaternary International 50-56 (December 28, 2016).

Bernard's blog discusses some of the details of the paper. As translated by Google from the French with a few corrections of my own to the translation:

Certain haplogroups have prospered as well. These are O3-F5, O3-F46, O3-F11, O1-F78, C3-F2613 and Q1-M120. About 65% of the current Chinese descend from one of these six paternal ancestors. The dates of expansion are estimated between 5000 and 6800 years ago. One of the questions that remains is who these six ancestors were. Were they the founders of the first Chinese complex societies? Were these neolithic expansions linked to the expansion of the present languages: Austro-Asiatic, Tai, Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian? For example haplogroup O3-M134 has a majority among the speakers of the Sino-Tibetan language, O2-O3-M95 and M7 are in the majority among speakers of Hmong-Mien languages and Austro-Asiatic, O1-M119 among speakers of the Thai-Kadai languages and Austronesian languages, and N-Tat in Uralic language speakers.

Ancient DNA studies are still rare. However, one such study showed us that the haplogroup O3-M7 was found in the Daxi culture in the Yang-Tse valley. This haplogroup is characteristic of the Mon-Khmer and Hmong-Mien peoples. The haplogroup O1-M119 was found in the Liangzhu culture that succeeds the Songze culture in the Yang-Tse Delta. This haplogroup is important among the Daic populations and the indigenous people of Taiwan suggesting that these cultures could be the origin of the Austronesian and Daic populations. The haplogroup O3-M122 was found in Longshan culture and is now common in Sino-Tibetan populations. Finally, haplogroup N-M231 is very common in Hongshan culture in the Liao River Valley. It is common today in the populations of northern Eurasia, the Tibeto-Burmese populations and the Chinese populations. These results link the ancient Yangshao, Longshan, Dawenkou and Hongshan cultures to modern Sino-Tibetan populations. However, more ancient DNA results are still needed.

Some of the key archaeological cultures are localized on the following map: