DNA Profiles of "Han" Taiwanese

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Vera Yang

 

Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroup: B (DNA test by FamilyTreeDNA)

 

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Vera's Chart:

Chart of Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroup B4c1 by Transfusion Medicine and Anthropology Research Laboratory, Mackay Memorial Hospital

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Excerpts from Wikipedia.org

SEA and ISEA

Southeast Asia (SEA) is a subregion of Asia, consisting of the countries that are geographically south of China, east of India and north of Australia.

Southeast Asia consists of two geographic regions: the Asian mainland, and island arcs and archipelagoes to the east and southeast. The mainland section consists of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia (or to be more precise, Peninsular Malaysia); the population of which are primarily Tibeto-Burman peoples, Tai peoples and Austroasiatic peoples. The maritime section (ISEA) consists of Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. Some definitions include Taiwan at the north. Austronesian peoples predominate in this region.

 

 

Haplogroup B (mtDNA)

Haplogroup B is believed to have arisen in Asia some 50,000 years before present. Its ancestral haplogroup was Haplogroup R.

Haplogroup B is found more often in East Asia. Its subgroup B2 is one of five haplogroups found in the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the others being A, C, D, and X.

Since the migration to the Americas by the ancestors of Native Americans is generally believed to have been from Siberia, it is especially surprising that Haplogroup B is the only haplogroup found in Native Americans which is not found in modern North Siberian populations. However, Haplogroup B has been found among Southern Siberians, such as Tuvans, Altays, and Buryats. This haplogroup is also found in Mongolians, Tibetans, Koreans, and among populations of Japan, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Madagascar, The Philippines, Polynesia and Micronesia.

In his popular book The Seven Daughters of Eve, Bryan Sykes named the originator of this mtDNA haplogroup Ina.

In Polynesian mythology, Ina is a lunar deity (daughter of Kui or Vaitere) who kept an eel in a jar, but it soon grew into the eel-god, Tuna, who tried to rape her. The people of Upolo rescued her and sentenced him to death. At his request, she buried his head in the sand and from it grew the first coconut. Ina is married to Marama, the god of the night. She lives in the sky during the daytime when her husband is not visible. She makes tapa (a type of cloth made from bark) and hangs her tapa in the sky, where it is fixed with boulders. The tapa are clouds, and when they are finished, she takes them away and the boulders roll, causing thunder. She has a daughter named Aroture. In Hawaii, Hina-Ika ("lady of the fish") is equivalent to Ina. She is the goddess of fish, the inventor of barkcloth, creator of Molokai and a lunar deity.

 

 

 

* Haplogroup B by the Genographic Project

Excerpt: Your Haplogroup likely arising on the high plains of Central Asia between the Caspian Sea and Lake Baikal. It is one of the founding East Asian lineages and, along with haplogroups F and M, comprises around three quarters of all mitochondrial lineages found there today.

Rdiating out from the Central Asian homeland, haplogroup B-bearing individuals began migrating into the surrounding areas and quickly headed south, making their way throughout East Asia. Today haplogroup B makes up around 17 percent of people from Southeast Asia, and around 20 percent of the entire Chinese gene pool. It exhibits a very wide distribution along the Pacific coast, from Vietnam to Japan, as well as at lower frequencies (about three percent) among native Siberians. Because of its old age and high frequency throughout east Eurasia, it is widely accepted that this lineage was carried by the first humans to settle the region.

 

 

Map of Central Asia

Central Asia is a region of Asia from the Caspian Sea in the west to central China in the east, and from southern Russia in the north to northern India in the south. It is also sometimes known as Middle Asia or Inner Asia, and is within the scope of the wider Eurasian continent. Various definitions of its exact composition exist and no one definition is universally accepted. Despite this uncertainty in defining borders, it does have some important overall characteristics. For one, Central Asia has historically been closely tied to its nomadic peoples and the Silk Road. As a result, it has acted as a crossroads for the movement of people, goods, and ideas between Europe, Western Asia, South Asia, and East Asia.

In modern context, Central Asia consists of the five former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Other areas are often included such as Afghanistan, northeastern Iran and western parts of the People's Republic of China such as Xinjiang. Mongolia, Jammu and Kashmir of India, Northern Areas of Pakistan, southwestern and middle China such as Tibet, Qinghai, Gansu and Inner Mongolia, and southern parts of Siberia may also be included in Central Asia.

During pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, Central Asia was a predominantely Iranian region that included sedentary Sogdians, Chorasmians and semi-nomadic Scythians, Alans. The ancient sedentary population played an important role in the history of Central Asia. Tajiks, Pashtuns, Pamiris and other Iranian groups are still present in the region. After expansion by Turkic peoples, central Asia became also the homeland for many Turkic peoples, including the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uyghurs, and Central Asia is sometimes referred to as Turkestan.

 

 

* mtDNA Haplogroup Specific Control Region Mutation Motifs by mtDNAmanager

 

 

* The Origins of Southern and Western Eurasian Populations: An mtDNA study by Toomas Kivisild

Mitochondrial DNA Haplogroups in Asian Populations

 

mtDNA Haplogroup Frequencies in Asian and Amerindian Populations

 

Excerpt: Super-cluster N in Asia is subdivided into distinct mtDNA haplogroups A, B and F (Fig. 2). Haplogroup A has maintained the ancestral T at np 16223, while B and F derive from N through a common ancestor with most Europeans, haplogroup R. Although the ancestral nodes N and R are both shared by European and eastern Asian mtDNA clusters, it is observed very rarely that haplogroups characteristic of Europeans are found in native Asian population and vice versa.

Haplogroups B, F and Y derive from super-cluster R (Fig. 2) which defines also most of European mtDNA variation with haplogroups specific of western-Eurasian populations.

Haplogroup B (9-bp deletion between COII and tRNALys, HVS-I motif 16189) is common in central and southeastern Asia, reaching almost fixation in some Oceanian populations (Ballinger et al. 1992; Hertzberg et al. 1989; Lum et al. 1998; Melton et al. 1995; Redd et al. 1995; Stoneking et al. 1990; Sykes et al. 1995). B is also one of the founder haplogroups of Native Americans (Torroni et al. 1993a; Torroni et al. 1992). Its lack in most of the Siberian populations has raised speculations that the 9-bp deletion could have arrived to the Americas via a separate and later migration either along the coastal regions of East Asia (Torroni et al. 1994c; Torroni et al. 1993a; Torroni et al. 1992) or even through the Pacific (Cann 1994). However, the latter view has been put under doubt because Polynesian and Amerind B sequences are different (Bonatto et al. 1996) and because haplogroup B was recently found in some Siberian populations, like the Buryats and Tuvinians (Derenko et al. 1999).

 

 

* The Emerging Limbs and Twigs of the East Asian mtDNA Tree by Toomas Kivisild, et al.

Excerpt: B4 is the prevailing bough in haplogroup B, covering all haplogroup B types in Native Americans and Polynesians. B5 is found most frequent, accounting for about one third to one half of the B types, in eastern China, Korea, and Japan (Horai and Hayasaka 1990; Horai et al. 1996; Seo et al. 1998; Nishimaki et al. 1999).

 

 

* Phylogeographic Differentiation of Mitochondrial DNA in Han Chinese by Yong-Gang Yao, et al. (2002)

Excerpt

Haplogroup Profiles: Haplogroup frequencies varied among the regional Han populations (table 4). Five main features can be discerned. (1) Haplogroups A, Z, and Y are absent in the two Guangdong samples. These two samples differ significantly in the number of M* mtDNAs. Haplogroup M7b (including M7b1, M7b2, and M7b*) is absent in the Zhanjiang sample but is present, with a frequency of 8.7%, in the Guangzhou sample. The frequency of F1a in the Guangzhou sample (17.4%) is higher than that in the Zhanjiang sample (6.7%). (2) Haplogroup M7b1 has by far the highest frequency (14.0%) in the Yunnan sample, whereas, in central and northeast China, it only occurs at low frequencies (<5.0%). (3) The Wuhan sample shows a relatively high frequency of haplogroup A (16.7%), followed by the Shanghai (11.7%) and Xinjiang (10.6%) samples. These three samples and the Zibo sample have relatively high frequencies (> 7.5%) of CZ. (4) Most of the mtDNAs that belong to haplogroups M9, M8a, Y, and G2 are restricted to the northern and northwestern populations of Liaoning, Qingdao, Xinjiang, and Qinghai, although the Taiwanese samples also include a good number of M9, Y, and G2 mtDNAs. The newly defined haplogroup, M10, has the highest frequency in the Liaoning sample (5.9%). (5) Generally, the frequencies of haplogroups F1 and B tend to decrease from south to north, whereas the D4 frequency increases.

 

 

* Phylogeographic Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in Northern Asian Populations by Miroslava Derenko, et al.

Excerpt: One of the most common haplogroups in northern and eastern Asian populations is haplogroup B, which falls into two main clades, B4 and B5. The majority of B lineages in northern Asia fall within haplogroup B4, whereas haplogroup B5 is more frequent among Koreans and Mongolians....

It is noteworthy that subgroup B4b1 (defined by mutations at positions 16086 and 16136, in addition to the B4b general motif), which is characteristic of populations of southern Siberia and Mongolia, was also found in northeastern Iran among Persians (at a frequency of 2.4%)....

 

Haplogroup B Frequencies (%) in Siberia, Southwestern Asia, and Central Asia

Haplogroup	Persians	Kurds	Tajiks	Koreans	Mongolians	Kalmyks	Buryats	Khamnigans	Tuvinians	East Evenks
B4	4.9			13.0	11.0	2.7	3.1	5.1	1.9
B5	1.2			7.8	4.3	.9	.3	2.0

 

Haplogroup	West Evenks	Yakuts	Shors	Khakassians	Altaians-Kizhi	Teleuts	Telenghits	Chukchi
B4	4.1	2.8	4.9	8.8	3.3	3.8	11.0
B5					1.1

 

 

* Mitochondrial Genome Variation in Eastern Asia and the Peopling of Japan by Masashi Tanaka, et al.

Haplogroup B: Renamed as B after Torroni et al. (1992), this haplogroup was identified by the presence of a 9-bp deletion in the COII/tRNALys intergenic region of mtDNA. This polymorphism was first detected in Asia by RFLP analysis (Cann and Wilson 1983). It was used to classify Japanese on the basis of the presence/absence of this deletion (Horai and Matsunaga 1986). Even in Asia, the monophyletic status of this cluster has been repeatedly questioned (Ballinger et al. 1992; Yao et al. 2000b); but although the 9-bp deletion has a high recurrence, it seems that together with transition 16189 it defines fairly well a monophyletic cluster, at least in eastern Asia. Recently, a sister clade of B, keeping the 16189 mutation but lacking the 9-bp deletion, has been detected in China, being designated as R11 (Kong et al. 2003). Asian subhaplogroups of B have been named as B4, identified by the 16217 mutation and B5, characterized by 10398 and 16140 mutations (Yao et al. 2002a). It has been deduced from analysis of complete sequences that transitions 709, 8584, and 9950 are also in the basal branch defining B5 (Fig. 2; Kong et al. 2003). Lower-level subdivisions have also been proposed. Three subclades (B4a, B4b, and B4c) were defined within B4 (Kong et al. 2003). At the same phylogenetic level are our Japanese branches named B4d, B4e, and B4f; and several new secondary clusters have also been detected in Japan within B4a, B4b, and B4c (Fig. 2). It is worthwhile to mention that those lineages harboring 16189, 16217, 16247, and 16261, also known as the Polynesian motif (Soodyall et al. 1995), belong to a branch of B4a, having in addition to 16247, 146, 6719, 12239, 14022, and 15746 as basic mutations. The B5 cluster was also subdivided in B5a and B5b on the basis of the HVSI mutations 16266A and 16243, respectively (Yao et al. 2002a), and reinforced with several additional positions after the analysis of complete Chinese (Kong et al. 2003) and Japanese (Fig. 2) sequences. Within B5b, new subdivisions are necessary to accurately classify the Japanese sequences (Fig. 2). Finally, on the basis of characteristic HVSI motifs, we had tentatively defined as B4a3 those lineages with 16189, 16217, 16261, and 16292 transitions. However, the phylogenetic position of a Chinese complete sequence (GD7812) belonging to this HVSI group (Kong et al. 2003) shows that a future redefinition of B4a might be necessary. The geographic distribution of haplogroup B is very complex. As expected from its age, the ancestral motif is widely distributed in Asia excluding Koryacks and other Siberians. The likewise old subhaplogroup B4 has mainly a central-eastern Asian distribution with diversities near 100% from central Asia to Japan. B4a shows a similar distribution as B4, having branches prevalent in Ryukyuans, Lahu of Yunnan, and aborigine Taiwanese (Table 2). In a similar vein, some branches of B4c are more abundant in southern areas (B4c2), whereas others (B4c1) are mainly detected in Korea and Japan, with derivatives in Taiwan (B4c1b). On the other hand, subhaplogroup B5a has its greatest diversity in southern-eastern China (89%), including Taiwan aborigines (67%), but its B5a1 derivative shows the greatest diversity in northern China (71%), being present in mainland Japanese. In turn, subhaplogroup B5b has its major diversity in Korea (83%) and also reached the Philippines (50%). Curiously, the B5b1 derivative shows its highest diversity (67%) and frequency (1%) in mainland Japanese.

 

 

* The Peopling of Korea Revealed by Analyses of Mitochondrial DNA and Y-Chromosomal Markers by Han-Jun Jin, et al.

Distribution of mtDNA Haplogroup Frequencies in 7 East Asian Populations

Haplogroup	Korean-Chinese	Mongolian	Manchurian	Han (Beijing)	Vietnamese	Thais	Korean
B				2		1
B4		2	2		3		7
B4a	2	1	1		1		11
B4b	2			2	1
B4b1							4
B4c							1
B5a	1				1	3	2
B5b	1	1					2
n	51	47	40	40	42	40	185

 

 

* A Spatial Analysis of Genetic Structure of Human Populations in China Reveals Distinct Difference between Maternal and Paternal Lineages by Fuzhong Xue, et al.

The Frequency Maps of Dominating mtDNA Haplogroups

 

Distribution of Northern and Southern Dominating Haplogroups of mtDNA

Haplogroup	Frequencies in south	Frequencies in north
B *	0.69	0.18
B4	4.03	2.82
B5*	0.43	0.27
B5b	0.64	1.45

 

 

* A Mitochondrial Stratigraphy for Island Southeast Asia by Catherine Hill, et al.

Excerpt: One of the most common haplogroups in ISEA is haplogroup B, which falls into two main clades, B4 and B5, although the unity of haplogroup B remains conjectural, since it is defined solely by a recurrent 9-bp deletion and a fast transition at an HVS-I site. The majority of B lineages in ISEA fall within haplogroup B4a, which is most frequent among Taiwanese aboriginals and in the Philippines. B4a includes the “Polynesian motif” (now classified as the root type within B4a1a1, formerly B4a1), which approaches fixation in Remote Oceania.

However, only the root type of B4a and one derived type (which may have been generated by recurrent mutation) are shared between ISEA and Taiwan. In fact, most Taiwanese B4a lineages sit on a separate branch (B4a2a), which has only been found elsewhere in two individuals from South China and which dates to 19,600 (±13,100) years ago. Lineages within B4a date to ~15,000 years ago in ISEA. Despite the extensive sampling of ISEA, only 19 individuals were found to belong to haplogroup B4a1a1 and hence share the Polynesian motif. These types were found as far west as Kalimantan and Lombok but are most common in Ambon and Sulawesi. In contrast to the high diversity of B4a1a1 in the eastern Indonesian data of Redd et al., all but two of the types found in this study were the root type, with an age of ~6,000 years ago in ISEA. Other B4 lineages are rather rare in most of ISEA, although B5a is found at ~4%.

 

 

* mtDNA Control Region Sequence Polymorphisms and Phylogenetic Analysis of Malay Population Living
in or Around Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia by S. Maruyama, et al.

Excerpt: B and F are major haplogroups in the present population. Haplogroup B is widely distributed throughout Continental East Asia, Island Southeast Asia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Among six kinds of B haplogroups, B4c1b3 was the most common. Although this lineage is widely distributed but not frequent throughout East Asia, including in the Japanese, Korean (0.1%), Taiwanese Han (0.7%), Daic (1.0%) and Southern Chinese Austro-Asiatic (0.8%), Continental Southern Chinese (1.7%), Vietnamese (1.6%), and Singapore Malay populations (0.5%), it is comparatively frequent in the Aboriginal Taiwanese (5.5%) and Island Southeast Asian populations (2.8%). The B4c2 lineage was also comparatively restricted to the Island Southeast Asian (2.2%), Singapore Malay (2.5%), Thai (2.4%), and Southern Chinese Daic (0.8%) and Austro-Asiatic (2.4%) populations, but was rare or not found at all in the East Asian, Vietnamese, Aboriginal Taiwanese, and Aboriginal Malay populations. The other B lineages are common haplogroups and are distributed widely in East and Southeast Asian populations, and some of them (B4a) even further into Oceanian populations.

 

 

* Ina Clan - Haplogroup B by geocities.com

Ina's clan are identified by Haplogroup B (the B clade of the human family tree). Ina's clan is known to have populated not only North and South America, but the Pacific Islands and possibly Madagascar as well. Her name comes from the Polynesian mythological figure "Ina", who appears on the banknotes of Rarotonga in the Cook Islands riding on the back of a shark to the island Mangaia. She is representative of the "first woman" and is also often personified in the moon.

Haplogroup B expanded from Central Asia to Eastern Asia, reaching Japan and the Southeastern Pacific Archipelagos. And, unlike previously believed, it is also found in some Siberian populations. From there, a substantial number of Ina's descendants then reached North America, either with the other colonists around 13,000 yrs BP via the Bering land bridge, or in a sea-borne colonization along the coast (or both).

Haplogroup B is highest among Polynesians (95%). It is present in Tibetans, Koreans, Japanese, and Mongolians at moderate levels, and is widely spread throughout Southern Siberian populations, although at lower levels

 

Polynesia

 

Polynesia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising a large grouping of over 1,000 islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean. Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the Polynesian triangle. The term "Polynesia", meaning many islands, was first used by Charles de Brosses in 1756, and originally applied to all the islands of the Pacific.

The Polynesian people are by ancestry a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian people and the tracing of Polynesian languages places their prehistoric origins in the Malay archipelago. The spread of pottery and domesticates in Polynesia is connected with the Lapita-culture that, around 1600–1200 BC, started expanding from New Guinea as far east as Fiji, Samoa and Tonga. During this time the aspects of the Polynesian culture developed. Around 300 BC this new Polynesian people spread from Fiji, Samoa and Tonga to the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Tuamotus and the Marquesas Islands. This was supported by Patrick Kirch and Marshall Weisler when they performed X-ray fluorescence sourcing of basalt artifacts found on both islands.

Between 300 and 500 AD, the Polynesians discovered and settled Rapa Nui (Easter Island). This is supported by archaeological evidence as well as the introduction of flora and fauna consistent with the Polynesian culture and characteristic of the tropics to this subtropical island. Around AD 500 Hawai'i was settled by the Polynesians and around AD 1000 Aotearoa (New Zealand) was settled as well. The migration of the Polynesians is impressive considering that the islands settled by them are spread out over great distances—the Pacific Ocean covers nearly a half of the Earth's surface area. Most contemporary cultures, by comparison, never voyaged beyond sight of land.

 

Polynesian Navigation

 

Recent DNA analysis suggests that Polynesians, including Tongans, Samoans, Niueans, Cook Islanders, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Marquesans and Māori, exhibit a maternal mitochondrial DNA link to indigenous peoples of the New Guinea Highlands 40,000 years ago (Bryan Sykes - Seven Daughters of Eve, page 133). The paternal Y chromosome also comes from "New Guinea 11,500 years ago - but since that time have evolved quite separately from Melanesians". After this period, proto-Polynesian genes exhibit a 9based pair mtDNA deletion common to East Asians, showing a separation from Taiwanese aborigines 6,000 years ago. Polynesian population expansion began in isolation in the Pacific 2,000 years ago. One particular DNA haplotype - the human lymphocyte antigen (HLA) Bw48 is commonly found in Polynesian populations, but occurs only sporadically in Melanesia. The only other known population with an appreciable frequency of HLA-Bw48 is that of the North American Indians or more specifically the Tlingit of Alaska. (Susan Serjeantson - Out of Asia - Peopling the Americas and the Pacific Edited by Robert Kirk and Emoke Szathmary 1985). In Polynesia Bw48 co-occurs with A11, - suggesting a variation since Polynesians departed from the people of the Alaskan/Canadian coast. This DNA evidence is supported by cultural and archaeological evidence showing a definite link between Eastern Polynesia and the Tlingit, Kwakuitl and Haida of the islands off Alaska and Canada. This suggests that although there has been some cultural input, including the arrival of plants and animals into Western Polynesia through Melanesia, the main genetic input into Polynesia has been from the north. This means proto-Polynesians voyaged from East Asia to Alaska 6,000 years ago and then entered the Polynesian triangle via Hawai'i 2,000 years ago.

* Exploring Ancestry in the South Seas by DNA Tribes

 

Prehistoric Settlement of the Pacific by Ward Hunt Goodenough

 

 

 

 

The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific by Geoffrey Irwin

 

 

 

 

Vaka Moana, Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific by K. R. Howe (Editor)

 

 

 

 

Pacific Paradises: The Discovery of Tahiti & Hawaii by Trevor Lummis

 

 

 

 

Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

 

 

 

 

Then There Were None by Martha H. Noyes

 

 

 

 

 

* Melanesian mtDNA Complexity by Jonathan S, et al.

Excerpt: A number of mtDNA haplogroups common in Near Oceania have not been found west of New Guinea (i.e., macrohaplogroups M27 and M29, and with some rare exceptions, P, Q, and M28). On the other hand, many haplogroups present in Southeast Asia are missing east of the Wallace Line (most branches of M, as well as B4c, B5, C, D, G, and U). This pattern reflects the long isolation of the populations that entered Near Oceania. Two younger mtDNA lineages do occur in appreciable frequencies in both regions, namely B4a1a1 and branches of E.

 

 

* Deciphering Past Human Population Movements in Oceania: Provably Optimal Trees of 127 mtDNA Genomes by J. Melanie, et al.

Excerpt: The 2 sequences from Taiwan described here (DQ372868 and DQ372869) belong to haplogroups M/M7c and N/R/B5a, both of which have been reported from HVR-I data to be present in Oceania and Island Southeast Asia. A Micronesian sample from the Marshall Islands (DQ372876) is closely related to the Taiwanese M7c sequence, and these together with a sequence from the Philippines and 1 from Mongolia form a subclade of M7c separate from other sequences from China and Japan (fig. S2, Supplementary Material online). The Taiwanese B5a sequence is notable for its distance from the B5a sequences from the Austro-Asiatic language–speaking Nicobarese (TMRCA estimate 27,732 ± 5,005 years); however, HVR-I sequences from aboriginal Taiwanese suggest that B5a lineages more closely related to the Nicobarese haplotypes may also exist in Taiwan (Trejaut et al. 2005).

The remaining 8 new sequences from Oceania belong to the B4a1a subgroup of haplogroup N/R/B4, bringing the total number of haplotypes in this group to 24. B4a1a HVR-I sequences are the most common type found in Polynesia, and an out-of-Taiwan model predicts the observed pattern of shared ancestry between Oceanic and Taiwanese B4a sequences. The complete mtDNA sequences reveal the phylogeny to be considerably more complex than indicated from the HVR-I sequences: several coding-region substitutions occur between the vertices defining the pre-Polynesian motif (16217C and 16261T) and the full Polynesian motif (16217C, 16247G, and 16261T) (fig. 3).

All of the sequences in the B4a1a subclade to date are from Oceania or Taiwan. The expansion of haplotypes from the B4a1a vertex has occurred recently; a sample from the Trobriand Islands (DQ372871) retains the ancestral sequence, whereas another from Taiwan (AJ842749) differs only by a single control-region transition. The TMRCA estimates for the B4a1a1 and Polynesian motif vertices (table 2) reflect the recent divergence of these sequences and highlight the limitations of molecular dating at the tips of human mtDNA phylogenies and, in particular, estimations based on the noncoding HVR-I. The dates for the B4a1a haplogroup from the entire mtDNA sequences certainly do not exclude the possibility of ancestry of this subhaplogroup in Taiwan, consistent with the out-of-Taiwan model. However, the current lack of entire mtDNA B4a1a sequences from mainland and Island Southeast Asia leaves an important gap in our understanding of the prehistory of this haplogroup.

 

 

 

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