Anchor: The Neolithic tribespeople who lived in what is now the Russian Far East eight-thousand years ago were revealed to have similar genetic features to modern Koreans. An analysis of two recently discovered skulls holding ancient DNA has led to the discovery of the biological origin of Koreans.
Mina Cha has more.
 
Report: The skulls were found in a cave known as Devil’s Gate in far-eastern Russia, which is an area where ancient Korean kingdoms, such as Goguryeo and East Buyeo, existed.

An international group of scientists has found through an analysis of the skulls that South Koreans originated from a mixture of northern and southern Asia thousands of years ago.

The team consisting of scientists at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology(UNIST) and experts from Russia, the U.K. and Germany announced on Thursday results of their analysis of the genomes extracted from the skulls. 

The skulls were found to belong to two East Asian women that lived 77-hundred years ago, one in her 20s and the other in her 40s.

The analysis showed that the women had brown eyes and shovel-shaped incisors. They also had genes susceptible to hypertension, were almost certainly lactose-intolerant and had dry earwax. All of the traits were common genetic characteristics of modern Koreans.

Jeon Seong-won at UNIST explains that these Neolithic people are the ancestors of South Koreans.

[Sound bite: Jeon Seong-won, Researcher at UNIST (Korean)]
“South Koreans’ genetic features have been explained most precisely when we blended the genomes of those inside the Devil’s Gate cave that represent the Northerners and those of the natives of Taiwan that represent the Southerners.”
 
Although they were the products of the mixture of the two races, Koreans were closer to the Southern Asians. In particular, Koreans, Japanese and Chinese were confirmed to have nearly identical genetic features to each other.

The findings were posted on the prominent international journal, Science Advances, on Wednesday. 
Mina Cha, KBS World Radio News.