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How the Hui became Han(ish)

Explore the genetics of Central Asia through Hui Muslims' exogamy rates and their Han ancestry absorption dynamics.

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I was doing some digging around on the genetics of Central Asia and stumbled upon the data that 7% of the mtDNA lineages of the Hui, Muslims who speak Chinese, are West Eurasian. This is opposed 0% for the Han, and 40-50% for the Uyghur. No surprises. But then I thought, what sort of exogamy rates would result in the Hui becoming, operationally, 90% Han during their stay in China? I think 10% is a conservative proportion for how much total genome content they have that is West Eurasian because the historical records suggest a male bias in the migration (so mtDNA would underestimate the proportion of West Eurasian), but, many of the individuals were probably of mixed or Turkic origin to begin with and so would be "back-migrating" those lineages to East Eurasia. The standard model assumes that the Hui derive from the Yuan dynasty, when the Mongols brought ...

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