  The emergence of agriculture is suggested to have driven extensive human
population growths. However, genetic evidence from maternal mitochondrial
genomes suggests major population expansions began before the emergence of
agriculture. Therefore, role of agriculture that played in initial population
expansions still remains controversial. Here, we analyzed a set of globally
distributed whole Y chromosome and mitochondrial genomes of 526 male samples
from 1000 Genome Project. We found that most major paternal lineage expansions
coalesced in Neolithic Time. The estimated effective population sizes through
time revealed strong evidence for 10- to 100-fold increase in population growth
of males with the advent of agriculture. This sex-biased Neolithic expansion
might result from the reduction in hunting-related mortality of males.
