Paternal Origins of Mongolic-Speaking Populations: A Review of Studies from Recent Decades (1999–2019) and Their Implications for Multidisciplinary Research in the Future

Abstract

The activities of Mongolic-speaking populations, a large group of people in eastern Eurasia, have important impacts on the history of East Asia and other parts of Eurasia. Most previous genetic research of East Asian populations, including ancient DNA studies, has involved samples from Mongolic-speaking populations or their ancient relatives. This review summarizes frequency data of paternal Y-chromosome haplogroups from all available literature about Mongolic-speaking populations from 1999 to 2019. Fourteen paternal components were identified, and six of them are proposed as major and common components in ancestor groups of Mongolic-speaking populations. The article thoroughly discusses the possible origin, migration patterns, and the roles of these six components in the evolutionary history of Mongolic-speaking populations, as well as implications of present achievements in human genetics for future multidisciplinary research in ethnology, history, archaeology, and linguistics.