Although our samples were from the same geographic location, a decreasing tendency of the western Eurasian-specific haplogroup frequency was observed, with the highest frequency present in Uygur (42.6%) and Uzbek (41.4%) samples, followed by Kazak (30.2%), Mongolian (14.3%), and Hui (6.7%).
The paper supports the idea that Uyghurs are an admixed population from Western and Eastern sources. But is this just an ancient cline of allele frequencies? In other words, are Uyghur lineage frequencies simply a function of their geographical position between East and West?
These are Y lineage frequencies. The Uyghurs look to be more than 50% "Western" here. This figure is from The Eurasian Heartland: A continental perspective on Y-chromosome diversity. Something else....
This is from Genetic Evidence for the Convergent Evolution of Light Skin in Europeans and East Asians. I've ...