What original people did modern day korean people branch off of?

Question

I'm chinese american and have been spending some time in asia. I just returned from a trip to korea...where I found the majority of the people to bear an indistinguishable (at least to me) physical resemblance to the chinese. They were on average slightly larger and had flatter faces but it was still very difficult to tell. My theory is that they evolved from chinese people...particularly northern chinese. I know the language vocabulary has borrowed some from chinese, is phonetically similar to japanese, and yet is also similar to some altaic langauges (russian, turkish, mongolian). Knowing this, did they branch off of the chinese at one point or were they always present on the korean peninsula? Many of the young people i spoke to about it in korea did not know for certain..

Answer 1

The Mongols.

Answer 2

This should help answer your question:  http://dnatribes.com/sample-results/dnat... .  I find this really amazing - not only how this destroys the old 3-race model I learned 35 years ago or more, but also how physical characteristics normally associated with race are frequently *not* indicative of a genetic (racial) relationship.

I know that this may not answer your question directly.  Here is another possibly useful link:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_... .

Also consider that Korea and China have had enough close contact over the centuries that telling a Korean from a (northern) Chinese person may be no easier than telling a Frenchman from a German - something I certainly can't do.

Jim, http://www.jimpettis.com/wheel/

Answer 3

China, but of course you have to keep in mind they came down from the east and south. Africa and Europe.

Answer 4

I remember learning as a child that ****** were relatively thin and had dark skin and hair to deal with the hot environment and intense sun.  Other races had other features.  I wondered about orientals, (my wife is Chinese and hates that word but it is a race term rather than a continent).  It occurred to me that they had features of cold, such as the extra fold of fat on the eyelid and features of sun such as the black hair.  It then occurred to me that the Himalaya had both cold and intense sun and I wondered if this might be their origin.  I found out decades later from reading the Pulitzer prize winning book by Jerrod Diamond, Guns Germs and Steel, that orientals indeed came from the Himalaya (Tibet) based on language studies.  It is likely that the harsh environment forced your ancestors to hone their technology and culture so that when they migrated out they became very dominant.  There are two types of orientals, sinodonts (new orientals), and sundadonts (old orientals).  Sinodonts (meaning chinese teeth in latin) are generally from northern china and Korea and the sundadonts comprise the rest.  The migrations out of Tibet apparently went from China to Korea to Japan to Indonesia and then to Africa  (Madagascar) as well as many islands and separately to North America in successive waves.   Anyway, I hope that helped some.

Answer 5

Maybe you grew up in America that's why you think that you bear close resemblance to them. First of all, Chinese are brachycephalic while Koreans are dolichocephalic, similar to Japanese. Even if I'm not a pure Chinese, I can differentiate a Korean from a Chinese, as well as a Japanese.

Koreans, according to genetic theories, are in reality descended from Northern Chinese who interbred with some Altaics.

Generally, East Asians, the Chinese and Koreans included, have split off from Caucasians reliatively late. They share many of their genes with South Asians or inhabitants of the Indian Subcontinent. In many places in Northern China, there are lots of Chinese who have red hair as well as blue eyes.

East Asians split off from Caucasians, while Southeast Asians (Southern Chinese included here) split off from Pacific Islanders. THat means that East Asians and Southeast Asians are different races from each other.

Answer 6

Hello

Of course all modern humans descend from Africans but looking at Haplogroups, Japanese and Koreans descended from Altaic people.

Certainly some Koreans have Chinese origins but a significant amount must've been Altaic.

Answer 7

no, ice cream doesnt have wheels; therefore, a computer mouse cannot block the radiation of a paper clip, unless it is a thursday, or the sky isn't not sometimes gray, sometimes.  Otherwise, no, you cannot paddle a garbage can up a rollercoaster, unless you are using a hands-free cellular device.