7/31/2019 CENTRAL ASIA the Genetic or Mythical Ancestry of
Descent Groups (in Central Asia) 41622
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Am. J. Hum. Genet. 75:11131116, 2004
1113
Report
The Genetic or Mythical Ancestry of Descent Groups: Lessons from
the YChromosome
Raphaelle Chaix,1 Frederic Austerlitz,3 Tatyana Khegay,4
Svetlana Jacquesson,5
Michael F. Hammer,6 Evelyne Heyer,1 and Llus Quintana-Murci2
1Unite dEco-Anthropologie, Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifique (CNRS) UMR 5145/Universite Paris 7, Musee de lHomme,
and2CNRS URA 1961, Unit of Molecular Prevention and Therapy of
Human Diseases, Institut Pasteur, Paris; 3Laboratoire Ecologie,
Systematiqueet Evolution, CNRS UMR 8079, Universite Paris-Sud,
Orsay, France; 4Institute of Immunology, Academy of Sciences, and
5Institut FrancaisdEtudes sur lAsie Centrale, Tashkent, Uzbekistan;
and 6Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of
Arizona, Tucson
Traditional societies are often organized into descent groups
called lineages, clans, and tribes. Each of thesedescent groups
claims to have a common ancestor, and this ancestry distinguishes
the groups members from therest of the population. To test the
hypothesis of common ancestry within these groups, we compared
ethnologicaland genetic data from five Central Asian populations.
We show that, although people from the same lineage andclan share
generally a recent common ancestor, no such common ancestry is
observed at the tribal level. Thus, atribe might be a conglomerate
of clans who subsequently invented a mythical ancestor to
strengthen group unity.
Many societies described as traditional are organizedinto
so-called descent groups: the population is dividedinto tribes, the
tribe into clans, and the clan into lineages(Ghasarian 1996; Maquet
2003). These descent groupsusually claim to have a distinctive
common ancestor, and
this ancestry is traced back through the male or femaleline.
Patrilineal populations, in which a father transmitshis patronymic
and his group affiliation to his offspring,are roughly twice as
frequent as matrilineal populations(Burton et al. 1996). The extent
to which the claimed an-
cestry of descent groups is real or socially constructed re-
mains to be elucidated. To distinguish between these
twohypotheses, we have taken advantage of the paternal in-heritance
of the nonrecombining region of the Y chro-mosome (Jobling and
Tyler-Smith 2003). If descent-grouporganization in patrilineal
societies corresponds to a ge-netic reality, there should be a
correlation between Y-
chromosome diversity and group affiliation.We compared
ethnological (descent-group affiliation)and Y-chromosome data from
247 men of five differentpatrilineal populations from the
Karakalpakia region of
Received August 3, 2004; accepted for publication September
9,2004; electronically published October 1, 2004.
Address for correspondence and reprints: Dr. Evelyne Heyer,
UnitedEco-Anthropologie, Musee de lHomme, 17 place du Trocadero,
75116 Paris, France. E-mail: [email protected] 2004 by The American
Society of Human Genetics. All rights reserved.
0002-9297/2004/7506-0016$15.00
Uzbekistan: Kazakhs ( ), Turkmen ( ), Uz-np 50 np 51beks ( ),
Karakalpaks Qongrat (referred to asnp 40Qongrat) ( ), and
Karakalpaks On Tort Uruwnp 53(referred to as On Tort Uruw) ( ).
Each samplenp 53was composed of unrelated healthy donors from
whom
appropriate informed consent was obtained. These fivepopulations
consist of former pastoral nomads who haverecently adopted a
seminomadic way of life, balancingbetween agriculture and
pastoralism. The rigor withwhich these Central Asian peoples have
maintained theirpatrilineal social organization has few parallels
world-wide. Some of their oral-tradition genealogies compriseup to
60 generations (Krader 1966). The populations areorganized into
well-defined lineages, clans, and tribeswith the exception of the
Qongrat and the Uzbeks, whohave mostly abandoned social
considerations about thelineage level. In some populations,
intermediary levels ofdescent groups between the tribe and the clan
(phratriesand subtribes in the Khazaks and clan groups in the
Uz-beks) are observed, but, since they are population-specific,they
were not taken into account in this study.
To assess Y-chromosome variation, we defined Y-chro-mosome
haplotypes by analyzing 12 Y-linked STR loci(DYS19, DYS385I,
DYS385II, DYS388, DYS389I,DYS389II, DYS390, DYS391, DYS392,
DYS393,DYS426, and DYS439), as described elsewhere (Reddet al.
2002). The highly polymorphic nature of STR mar-kers allowed us to
investigate population genetic struc-
