Distribution
Haplogroup D-M15 is widely distributed throughout populations that dwell to the northwest, north, northeast, east, and southeast of the Himalaya. It is not found among the populations of India to the south and southwest. The distribution of Haplogroup D1 in Southeast Asia is also very limited, as it is found there only at low frequency and only among populations that speak Tibeto-Burman or Miao–Yao languages, which have ancestral ties to the north.
The distribution of Haplogroup D-M15 is much more regular in the north, as it is found among nearly all the populations of Central Asia and Northeast Asia south of the Russian border, although generally at a low frequency of 2% or less. A dramatic spike in the frequency of Haplogroup D-M15 occurs as one approaches the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau of western China: among some local populations in Qinghai, it has been found to reach as high as 100%. Its frequency gradually fades as one travels south through the territory of the Tibetan peoples, as Haplogroup O3, which is the most common haplogroup among the Han Chinese and also generally found among Southeast Asian populations, becomes dominant. Haplogroup D-M15 continues to occur at an overall very low frequency among the Han people to the east; however, there are some indications that the frequency of D-M15 among the Hans may vary significantly between localities. A secondary, minor spike in the frequency of Haplogroup D-M15 occurs again in Korea, where it may reach as high as 5% to 8%; this somewhat heightened frequency does not stretch into Manchuria to the north or Japan to the east, which may corroborate historical accounts of immigration from the country of Qin in the far west of ancient China to the country of Jinhan, which is believed to have been located somewhere in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula. Ancient Chinese historians are known for their habit of drawing what often seem to be forced connections between contemporary peoples and putative ancestors of misty antiquity, and the comments about immigration from Qin to Jinhan might have been motivated by the similarity that the ancient central Chinese perceived between the languages of Qin and Jinhan. Nevertheless, on this occasion the genetic evidence seems to provide the story with some independent corroboration.
As for the ultimate origin of Haplogroup D-M15, one can only speculate that it might share a recent common ancestor with other members of the greater D-M174 lineage who have not tested as part of another branch. Such are are found at a low frequency among modern populations of Central Asia.
Read more about this topic: Haplogroup D1 (Y-DNA)
Famous quotes containing the word distribution:
“The man who pretends that the distribution of income in this country reflects the distribution of ability or character is an ignoramus. The man who says that it could by any possible political device be made to do so is an unpractical visionary. But the man who says that it ought to do so is something worse than an ignoramous and more disastrous than a visionary: he is, in the profoundest Scriptural sense of the word, a fool.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“The question for the country now is how to secure a more equal distribution of property among the people. There can be no republican institutions with vast masses of property permanently in a few hands, and large masses of voters without property.... Let no man get by inheritance, or by will, more than will produce at four per cent interest an income ... of fifteen thousand dollars] per year, or an estate of five hundred thousand dollars.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men’s thinking.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)