Newest Study Questioning/Debunking(?) the Out of Taiwan hypothesis, Ancient Voyaging and Polynesian Origins Options

[trismegistos]

Before anything else, pls be referred to the old thread for more interesting points and links... http://www.asiafinest.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=223334
http://www.cell.com/AJHG/fulltext/S0002-92...rge_figure=true
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The original paper:
http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929711000103.pdf

Ancient Voyaging and Polynesian Origins

Pedro Soares1, 2, Teresa Rito1, 3, 4, Jean Trejaut5, Maru Mormina1, 6, Catherine Hill1, Emma Tinkler-Hundal1, Michelle Braid1, Douglas J. Clarke3, Jun-Hun Loo5, Noel Thomson7, Tim Denham8, Mark Donohue9, Vincent Macaulay7, Marie Lin5, 10, Stephen Oppenheimer11 and Martin B. Richards1,

In this paper,
ISEA: includes Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysian Borneo. Taiwan-excluded

Near Oceania (the western Pacific): includes New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, Bougainville, and the Solomon Islands; and

Remote Oceania includes Island Melanesia southeast of the Solomons (including Vanuatu and Fiji), Polynesia, and Micronesia

---------------------------------

Some highlights:

Haplogroup B4a1a, although almost exclusively associated with speakers of Austronesian languages, cannot have dispersed from Taiwan into ISEA and the Pacific 3–4 ka. The 95% confidence limits on the ages of B4a1a1 and B4a1a1a from complete mtDNAs explicitly reject this explanation for their distribution (Table 1). Because B4a1a, along with some haplogroup Q lineages—of likely New Guinean origin, which occur in Polynesia at a rate of <5%[10] and [12]—make up almost all of the mtDNAs found in Polynesia, these results exclude any significant direct Taiwanese contribution from 4 ka to the maternal ancestry of Polynesians. (We cannot entirely rule out an early Holocene dispersal from Taiwan >8 ka,23 but such a dispersal would not match the archaeologically dated “out of Taiwan” model.)

In ruling out both a simple Taiwanese and a Wallacean origin, these results also contradict an influential “slow boat” model for Polynesian origins that suggests an ancestry in Taiwan at 4 ka for the maternal line of descent while positing a large Near Oceanic origin for the male side, based on Y chromosome evidence.[10], [47], [48] and [49] Our results suggest instead that the mtDNA subclade B4a1a and the major Pacific Y chromosome haplogroup C2 might be distributed in a rather similar way, with a proximally Near Oceanic, but ultimately Southeast Asian, ancestry. Several widely distributed paternal subclades may have a Taiwanese ancestry, but they only occur in Oceania at low frequencies.[49] and [50] Available autosomal microsatellite diversity, furthermore, suggests that Polynesian patterns show a partly East Asian and partly Near Oceanic ancestry at low resolution but are distinct from both at higher resolution.[51] and [52] This is also compatible with our model of a largely ancient Asian ancestry for Polynesian origins, with an early Holocene incubation period in ISEA and then in Near Oceania. The male and female lines of descent may therefore not have such radically contrasting histories as some have proposed.[10] and [53]

The spread of B4a1a1a back through New Guinea into ISEA, which most likely took place 4–5 ka, suggests instead that models based on the idea of a “voyaging corridor,”[5] and [7] facilitating exchange between ISEA and Near Oceania, may provide a more plausible backdrop to the settlement of the Remote Pacific. The HVS-I database provides further indications of small-scale bidirectional movements across this region. E1b, in particular, might plausibly have been carried by small numbers of Austronesian-speaking voyagers who integrated with coastal-dwelling B4a1a1 groups in the Bismarcks (where it is present at 5%), perhaps stimulating the rise and spread of the Lapita culture and the dispersal of the Oceanic languages.38 Other lineages from Southeast Asia are also found at low frequencies in Near Oceania, and still others are candidates for dispersal from Taiwan into eastern Indonesia via the Philippines, but they did not reach Oceania.25 Some of these may have also been involved in the transmission of Austronesian culture and languages, although they evidently had no demic role in the founding of Polynesia.

Thus, although our results rule out any substantial maternal ancestry in Taiwan for Polynesians, they do not preclude an Austronesian linguistic dispersal from Taiwan to Oceania 3–4 ka,54 mediated by social networks rather than directly by people of Taiwanese ancestry but perhaps involving small numbers of migrants at various times.9 The mtDNA patterns point to the possibility of a staged series of dispersals of small numbers of Austronesian speakers, each followed by a period of extensive acculturation and language shift.55

Overall, though, the mtDNA evidence highlights a deeper and more complex history of two-way maritime interaction between ISEA and Near Oceania than is evident from most previous accounts.54 Archaeological and linguistic evidence for maritime interaction between ISEA and Near Oceania during the early and mid-Holocene is strengthening, however,[9] and [56] and it has been suggested that contacts might have been facilitated by sea-level rises and improvements in conditions on the north coast of New Guinea.4 Early to mid-Holocene social networks between New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago are marked by the spread of stone mortars and pestles, obsidian, and stemmed obsidian tools from 8 ka57 until before or alongside the advent of Lapita pottery in the Bismarcks at 3.5 ka.6 The absence of early Lapita pottery on New Guinea suggests major disruptions to preexisting exchange networks within Near Oceania before or at 3.5 ka, with increasing social isolation of some areas and increasing interaction between others.

There is also emerging evidence from both archaeology and archaeobotany for the spread of domesticates during the mid-Holocene, before the presumed advent of Austronesian dominance from 4 ka. Molecular analyses suggest that bananas,58 sago,59 greater yam,60 and sugarcane61 all underwent early domestication in the New Guinea region. These cultivars, and associated cultivation practices, diffused westward into ISEA, where the plants and linguistic terms for them were adopted by Proto-Malayo-Polynesian speakers upon their arrival 4 ka[9], [54] and [62]. The vegetative cultivation of these plants evidently occurred within ISEA before any Taiwanese influences became significant.

This work suggests, therefore, a convergence of archaeological and genetic evidence, as well as concordance between different lines of genetic evidence. Our results imply an early to mid-Holocene Near Oceanic ancestry for the Polynesian peoples, likely fertilized by small numbers of socially dominant Austronesian-speaking voyagers from ISEA in the Lapita formative period, 3.5 ka. Our work can therefore also pave the way for new accounts of the spread of Austronesian languages.

This post has been edited by trismegistos: Sep 24 2011, 08:27 AM

[maharlikangpilip...]

I don't know if this is of any help to your discussions

http://www.physorg.com/news130761648.html
http://www.ukm.my/news/index.php/en/typogr...questioned.html

[trismegistos]

Is less hair an adaptation to an Arctic climate? Does that also mean that we Asians descend from a population from an Arctic climate, perhaps somewhere in Siberia? Or did Mongoloids/Proto-Mongoloids lose their hair prior to arriving to any Arctic climate? Did Proto-Mongoloids even have hair to begin with? We could also descend from an Australoid group that lost their hair.

More likely on the latter from the Australoid looking ancestors bearing the Y chromosomal K haplogroup which probably had lighter skin and lesser hair. Or even earlier from our Out of African ancestors. The oldest tribe, the San people, are Capoid people with lesser hair, high cheekbone, epicanthic eye folds just like the Mongoloids' and more lighter skin exhibiting NEOTENY. They are the nearest to the Ychromosomal ADAM.

Quoting Xigon

-San people of Kalahari. The supposedly "oldest" tribe in the world. Lots of them have high cheekbones and eyes like East Asians. I wouldn't be surprised if we descended from them
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybji0axp6s0
@2:11
The author said, "Everything predicted in their blood seems to be written in their faces. It's like looking at a composite model of every face from around the world. The eye-shape of East Asians, the high cheekbones of Mongolians, the mid-brown skin that could turn darker or lighter."

I'd say they look surprisingly Asian, especially the person @2:43. The main difference is their skin tone.

They have the oldest Y chromosomal haplogroup A and B.

In the 1990s, genomic studies of different peoples around the world found that the Y chromosome of Khoisan men (using samples drawn from several San tribes) share certain patterns of polymorphisms that are distinct from the genomes of all other populations.[9] As the Y chromosome is highly conserved from generation to generation, this type of DNA testing is used by geneticists to determine when different subgroups separated from one another and hence their last common ancestry. The authors of these studies suggested that the Khoisan may have been one of the first populations to differentiate from the most recent common paternal ancestor of all extant humans, the so-called Y-chromosomal Adam by patrilineal descent, estimated to have lived 60,000 to 90,000 years ago.[10] The authors also note that their results should be interpreted as only finding that the Khoisan "preserve ancient lineages", and not that they "stopped evolving" or are an "ancient group", since subsequent changes in their population are in parallel and similar to those of all other human populations.[9]

Various Y-chromosome studies [11][12][13] since confirmed that the Khoisan (or Khoe-San) carry some of the most divergent (oldest) Y-chromosome haplogroups. These haplogroups are specific sub-groups of haplogroups A and B, the two earliest branches on the human Y-chromosome tree.

Physically the Khoisan, with their short frames (149–163 cm/4'9-5'4;), copper brown skin, tightly coiled "peppercorn" hair, high cheekbones, and epicanthic eye folds are quite distinct from the darker-skinned peoples who constitute the majority of Africa's population, though both population are usually dolichocephalic (Huxley, 1870). They have moderately long legs and longer abdominal muscles, traits that sharply distinguish them from surrounding Pygmy and Bantu populations having muscles with short bellies and long tendons (Coon 1965). In past ethnography, the Khoisan have been referred to as the Capoid race because they can be visually distinguished from the Congoid Africans of Bantu origin.[18]

... Ashley Montagu further noted that Bushmen have the following neotenous traits relative to Caucasoids: light skin pigment, less hairy, round-headed, bulging forehead, small cranial sinuses, flat roof of the nose, small face, small mastoid processes, wide eye separation, median eye fold, short stature and horizontal penis.[37]

As for their curly hair becoming straight later on as our OOA(Out of Africa) ancestors went northwards and east wards finding themselves in a cooler climate during the Last Glacial Maximum evolved from the ancestors of the archaic Haplogroup A and B, being the earliest to differentiate from the Y chromosomal Adam, over a long span from 150,000, going to South Asia and Southeast Asia becoming the Australoids bearing the archaic haplogroup that is ancestral to almost all Eurasians, the Haplogroup K, which branched into the Asian O haplogroup and the South Asian and European R haplogroup 50,000 to 10,000 years ago.

Northern Philippines for e.g. could have a decidous temperate climate especially in the mountainous region of the Cordilleras back then during the last Ice Age and our ancestors from Africa in transit had reached the Middle East before reaching South Asia below the Genetic barrier, the Great Himalayas, those areas were even colder providing the Cold adaptation for a straighter hair and more lighter skin coloration.

This post has been edited by trismegistos: Jul 1 2011, 01:39 PM