Baiyue Tribal DNA for people originating from Guangdong

[wonton888]

Genetic studies show that Cantonese people from the Pearl River Delta Region have about 40% northern central plains DNA and 60% southern aboriginal DNA from the South (Baiyue tribes).  My family paternal histories show our founding fathers come from places like Shanxi, Shaanxi, Henan, etc.  Most Central Plains migrants to Guangdong were in majority males who intermarried Southern aboriginal women.  Three out of four of my grandparents are from Guangdong in Jiangmen and Zhongshan regions respectively.  My paternal grandmother is a Peruvian mestiza with Amerindian, English, and Italian blood. Traditionally, when a Han male (Cantonese refer themselves as Tang ren, due to the mass Sinicization period with mass migration from the North to Guangdong) marries an "outsider/foreigner" the whole family becomes Han in ethnicity and their culture becomes Han (note there are Cantonese who practiced Bone collecting, an ancient practice of Baiyue tribes en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bone_collecting ) .  But then again, there was no said knowledge of the concept of DNA back then but I want to learn my connection to Zhuang, Dai, Miao-Yao, and She tribes that are indigenous to the region.  My DNA ratio from GEDMatch showed a very close 60% southerner and 40% Northeast Asian ratio from my Asian DNA. My DNA matches were people from Zhongshan and Jiangmen regions, so I believe the results. Wegene does show tribal Southern DNA, but it does not show Zhuang DNA which was historically very influential to Lingnan culture. In the future,  I hope we can learn to embrace our Yue tribal roots as well. 

[Doug 周]

Him Mark Lai ^click brought clarity. As excerpted from his digital archives ^click in a 1991 treatise, taken from THE GUANGDONG HISTORICAL BACKGROUND, WITH EMPHASIS ON THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PEARL RIVER DELTA REGION pp 88-89 ^click

From the point of view of the genealogical research, this (Guangdong) history also provides some guidance for evaluating information on one's ancestral tree. Although it is probably true that the remote ancestors of many Guangdongese can be traced to North China and perhaps even to the Yellow Emperor, another fact, obvious from Guangdong history, is that the native Yue and their heirs once formed a significant part of the Guangdong population and have left an obvious physical and cultural imprint on the (Cantonese) people. Yet, one finds very few Guangdongese claiming them as ancestors. One suspects, however, they may have more descendents in Guangdong than is generally acknowledged in the genealogies, since many Guangdong genealogist, in seeking social status and prestigious and respectable ancestral trees, may have been tempted to make claims, often unsubstantiated, to remote ancestors of northern, and hence Han Chinese, as opposed to “southern barbarian” origin. It should be noted that women, at least some of whom were not of northern Han Chinese origin, are excluded from genealogical considerations when tracing lineages. Also over the centuries there have been numerous changes of surnames for various reasons so that the possession of a certain surname does not necessarily ensure descent from the alleged progenitor of that clan. All these considerations point to the fact that it is not an easy task to do historically rigorous genealogical research. A few family have a reliable genealogy reaching back many centuries. For example the genealogy of the descendants of Confucius is probably one of the few authentic ones since so much attention had been focused on the family during the entire course of Chinese history. For others the historically reliable part would not extend beyond the progenitor of the local lineage identified with his clan village of origin. In still other cases, the situation falls somewhere between the two extremes. In all cases, including the genealogy of Confucius' family, a point is eventually reached beyond which the information is not subject to rigorous historical analysis and can only be considered part of a tradition. Tradition, as long as one recognizes the limitations, of course can continue to be a source of pride and strength in the particular individual and his family.

From Him Mark Lai, the famous genealogist who advanced the study of Chinese American family history just before my time. I would have loved to have listen to him lecture.

A prior discussion in this post: siyigenealogy.proboards.com/post/14835/

[wonton888]

SOUTHERN YUE CULTURE
IN THE PRE-CONQUEST PERIOD

web.archive.org/web/20060903204146/http://mcel.pacificu.edu/as/resources/zhuang/zhuang2.htm#Anchor-CHAPTER-37516