Gaya

Upcoming is Pere Gelabert et al., "Diverse northern Asian and Jomon-related genetic structure discovered among socially complex Three Kingdoms period Gaya region Koreans".

Those three kingdoms would be Goguryeo (north), and Baekje and Silla (sharing the south). Gaya - so I read - was in the south but not one of the kingdoms. Silla annexed Gaya in the AD 500s maybe in the wake of that horrible half-decade, you know the one. Later, in the 600s, the Tang would pretty much annex Baekje and subdue Silla (and Gaya) - driving out Silla's Japanese allies.

The Gaya capital was Gimhae. They buried their honoured dead in Daeseong-dong... with some of their living. Human sacrifices were interred there. Socially complex, indeed. Place was Squid Game. But, as the saying goes, their loss is geneticists' gain as we get a cross-section of the Gaya genome.

Gaya women were G4 like modern Koreans and the "Yayoi farmers" of old Japan. The men were also typically Korean, marking a contrast with Japanese who retained more of their ancient Siberian "Jomon" Y-chromosomes. Since Gaya was a loser in Tang-period history - twice over - the authors feel safe in asserting that the actual Three Kingdoms bore similar genetics. I mean, unless those Kingdoms (like, er, Japanese) imported Gaya's women . . .

Gaya does have more "Jomon" ancestry than the authors expect, mtDNA and Y aside. Specifically: the Honshu sort of Jomon, ninth century BC. (Japan is a long and mountainous chain of islands, and "Jomon" is unironically pots - not people.) The admixture is set around AD 200 - before Kofun, note. The paper doesn't venture on whether Gaya (whilst it existed) harboured a holdover Jomon-esque population or if this was simply a Honshu bunch who came over and intermarried. I could suspect that of Japan-allied Silla proper, but I would not have suspected that of independent Gaya. Mind you... before Kofun, was a very different Japan.

I am glad this is a preprint, because I really do hope Dr Gelabert's team incorporate this recent data from pre-Kofun / post-Kufun Japan.