The genomics of ancient East Asia
In 1991, I began the initial stage of my international project for the investigation of the Bronze Age and Iron Age Tarim mummies by focusing on their genetics. The reason for my doing so was because that was just around the time that techniques for the study of ancient DNA were being developed by Svante Pääbo and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany. I was fortunate in gaining the advice and support of Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, eminent population geneticist of Stanford University. Although I continued to carry out genetics research and was an author of the first paper on the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of the Tarim mummies*, later I became disenchanted by genomic studies, not just of humans, but particularly of humans because of ulterior motives. Due to their susceptibility to be mathematically and statistically manipulated for political purposes, genomic studies had become an ideological minefield. Consequently, I switched the emphasis of the project to other disciplines such as textiles**, metallurgy***, physical anthropology****, archeology (burial practices, material goods, etc.)*****, micro/macrohistory******, equestrian studies*******, and, of course, linguistics********.
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