Abstract: The genetic analyses of Zhou and Han era human populations of Linzi in Shandong Province, China were done through comparing the mitochondrial DNA (mt DNA)sequences of the populations.The results of two articles written by Wang Li et al and Shintaroh Ueda were that the populations that lived in Linzi during the periods 2500 years ago, 2000 years ago and the present day showed great genetic similarity to the modern European populations, the modern central and western Asian populations and the modern eastern Asian population respectively.
However, different conclusions were drawn before from another two papers by Shintaroh et al and Hiroki Oota et al.They extracted DNA and studied specimens from the 2000 years ago remains cited later by Wang Li.The results revealed that the closest genetic distance was between the 2000 years ago population and the modern Taiwan Han Chinese.The 2000 years ago people show closer genetic affinity with Mongolians, mainland Japanese and Koreans than with other peoples.In fact, the authors of 4 papers were in the same experimental group and Shintaroh Ueda was the leader of them.They all analyzed the hypervariable region Ⅰ and compared the 185-bp MT1 and MT2 nucleotide sequences (positions:16194-16378).But they arrived at different results.How to explain the completely different results ?Maybe the results indicated that a unknown factor existed and affected the result in this kind of genetic study.
The opinions that the Linzi populations lived 2500 years ago and 2000 years ago belong to Europeans and central and western Asians respectively are not consistent with the morphological and archaeological studies of the skeletal remains of these populations.There was no reliable evidence that ancient European-like population moved to the Far East surpassing the Lake Baikal region according to the works of former Soviet Union anthropologists.The European-like populations moving eastward in the north-western region of China before Qin -Han era had not reached the west part of Gansu Province. According to the morphological and archaeological information available it is difficult to prove that the Western people entered the drainage area of Yellow River including Shandong before the Han era.

Key words: Shandong; The Zhou-Han era; Ancient population; mtDNA; Morphology; Europeans; Central Asians; East Asians; Linzi