Recent Genome Research Finds Korean Ancestry are from Vietnam & Far East Russia

Koreans, Vietnamese and Taiwanese inherited traits from Russian Far East

Posted on : Feb.2,2017 16:46 KSTModified on : Feb.2,2017 16:46 KST


Human skull found at Devil’s Gate Cave, from 7,700 years ago

Research project shows people in Asia have inherited more of ancestors’ genetic heritage than EuropeansResearch shows that modern Koreans inherited traits of the ancient people from the Russian Far East in the north and from places like Vietnam and Taiwan in the south.

“We’ve been working in cooperation with research teams from places like England, Russia and Germany to analyze a dielectric [genome] from a 7,700-year-old human bone found at Devil‘s Gate Cave north of the Tumen River in the Russian Far East. The results show hereditary traces from the ancestors of modern East Asians, including Koreans, have endured and been passed down for ages,” said the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology Genomics Institute on Feb. 1.



Devil’s Gate Cave and ethnic groups living in its vicinity

The research team’s thesis was published in the Feb. 2 issue of the online science journal Science Advances. In 1973, the bones from several bodies ascertained to be Neolithic-Age people were dug up at the Devil‘s Gate Cave, which was located in Goguryeo, Dongbuyeo and Okjeo (ancient Korean kingdoms). When the research team compared the people found at Devil’s Gate Cave with the genome variation of scores of existing ethnic groups in Asia, the results showed that the Devil’s Gate Cave people combined with genomes from isolated indigenous people in Vietnam and Taiwan were best expressed by the genetic variation represented in modern Koreans. This means that Koreans’ hereditary ancestors are closely related to both the ancient people of Vietnam and Taiwan in the south and the ancient people of the north.

“While the hereditary traces of ancient hunter gatherers have nearly disappeared in modern western Eurasians due to migration, conquering and war of recent millennia, we’ve come to discover that modern East Asians have inherited the genetic heritage of their ancestors,” life science professor and UNIST Genomic Institute researcher Park Jong-hwa said.

Like Koreans, the people found at the Devil’s Gate Cave had brown eyes and shovel-shaped incisors. They carried genetic traits typical of modern East Asians, such as the genes that make digesting milk difficult, that make one susceptible to high blood pressure and that cause a lack of strong body odor. This suggests that East Asians are genetically “one race”.

“Thousands of years ago East Asian hunter gatherers expanded over all of Asia, as far as Russia in the north, and formed the northern race. And about ten thousand years ago the southern Han Chinese developed a full-scale agrarian society and rapidly expanded. However, in contrast to western Eurasians, the southern people did not supplant the northern people, but rather the two groups intermingled,” Park explained. “The southern people expanded much more than the northern people, so the hereditary traits of modern people show a much stronger influence from the southern people,” Park added.

Koreans’ similarity with people found at Devil’s Gate Cave and Asian ethnic groups