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Fascinating, absolutely fascinating:
European Man Found in Ancient Chinese Tomb, Study Reveals
Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
May 24, 2007
Human remains found in a 1,400-year-old Chinese tomb belonged to a man of European origin, DNA evidence shows.
Chinese scientists who analyzed the DNA of the remains say the man, named Yu Hong, belonged to one of the oldest genetic groups from western Eurasia.
The tomb, in Taiyuan in central China, marks the easternmost spot where the ancient European lineage has been found (see China map).
"The [genetic group] to which Yu Hong belongs is the first west Eurasian special lineage that has been found in the central part of ancient China," said Zhou Hui, head of the DNA laboratory of the College of Life Science at Jilin University in Changchun, China.
Hui led the research, which will be published in the July 7 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The tomb containing Yu Hong's remains has been undergoing excavation since 1999.
It also contains the remains of a woman of East Asian descent.
The burial style and multicolor reliefs found in the tomb are characteristic of Central Asia at the time, experts say.
The people pictured in the reliefs, however, have European traits, such as straight noses and deep-set eyes.
"The mixture of different cultures made it difficult to confirm the origin of this couple, and the anthropologists also could not determine the race of these remains, owing to the partial missing skulls," Hui said.
To learn more about the history of the couple, Hui's team studied their mitochondrial DNA, a type of DNA inherited exclusively from the mother that can be analyzed to track human evolution.
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