'Ghost ancestors': Chinese scientists use ancient DNA to find origins of modern Tibetans

In a major breakthrough, scientists in China have found traces of the origins of the “ghost ancestors” of modern Tibetans to the southwestern province of Yunnan. the did it by analysing the ancient DNA. The finding becomes crucial because the origins of people living on the Tibetan Plateau and information around how their ancestors migrate and adapted the tough environment of the area have long been a mystery for the world.

A group of Chinese paleontologists found the existence of a hypothesis that academics had speculated about but failed to test. The hypothesis claimed that there is an archaeological site in central Yunnan, which is one of the origins of populations on the Tibetan Plateau.

The study was published on the peer-reviewed journal Science on Friday (May 30).

“This study not only fills a critical gap in the genetic data of prehistoric populations in East and Southeast Asia, but also identifies one of the Tibetan Plateau’s ‘ghost ancestors’ for the first time from a genetic perspective,” the authors of the study said, South China Morning Post reported.

It is a fact that at least 80 per cent of the Tibetan Plateau populations' genetic composition originates from northern Chinese populations. The date goes back to 9,500 to 4,000 years ago. Still, the origin of the remaining 20 per cent have been unknown. The 20 per cent portion often called as s “ghost ancestry” by the academic community.

'Ghost population' in Africa?

In 2020, a research had found that around 2 per cent to 19 per cent of present-day West Africans have their genetic ancestry to an extinct human species. The researches named it a "ghost population."

"We estimate interbreeding occurred approximately 43,000 years ago, with large intervals of uncertainty," said University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) human genetics and computer science professor Sriram Sankararaman, who led the study published this week in the journal Science Advances, news agency Reuters reported.