ABSTRACT
Asia encompasses considerable territorial expanse, geographic compartmentalization and ethnic diversity (Blench 2005). Correspondingly, the patterns of extant genetic diversity often recapitulate these themes (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1994; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 2003; Underhill 2003), providing an independent line of ever developing and independently reproducible empirical evidence amenable to multidisciplinary hypothesis testing that is essential to a fuller understanding of the panorama of human history.
