MBE Advance Access originally published online on August 21, 2006
Molecular Biology and Evolution 2006 23(11):2234-2244; doi:10.1093/molbev/msl093
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© 2006 The Authors
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Research Articles |
Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y Chromosome Gradients Across the Pacific
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* Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Department of Forensic Molecular Biology, Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Department of Biology, The Netherlands Forensic Institute, The Hague, Netherlands
Department of Biological Sciences, Biological Computation and Visualization Center, Louisiana State University
|| N.I. Vavilov Institute of General Genetics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
¶ Laboratoire des langues et civilisations à tradition orale, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Villejuif, France
# Center for Neural Science, New York University
** Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Andechs, Germany
Department of Linguistics, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany
Department of Genetics, Stanford University
Institute of Functional Genomics, University of Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany
|||| Department of Molecular and Clinical Genetics, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Central Clinical School, The University of Sydney, Australia
E-mail: m.kayser{at}erasmusmc.nl.
The human settlement of the Pacific Islands represents one of the most recent major migration events of mankind. Polynesians originated in Asia according to linguistic evidence or in Melanesia according to archaeological evidence. To shed light on the genetic origins of Polynesians, we investigated over 400 Polynesians from 8 island groups, in comparison with over 900 individuals from potential parental populations of Melanesia, Southeast and East Asia, and Australia, by means of Y chromosome (NRY) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers. Overall, we classified 94.1% of Polynesian Y chromosomes and 99.8% of Polynesian mtDNAs as of either Melanesian (NRY-DNA: 65.8%, mtDNA: 6%) or Asian (NRY-DNA: 28.3%, mtDNA: 93.8%) origin, suggesting a dual genetic origin of Polynesians in agreement with the "Slow Boat" hypothesis. Our data suggest a pronounced admixture bias in Polynesians toward more Melanesian men than women, perhaps as a result of matrilocal residence in the ancestral Polynesian society. Although dating methods are consistent with somewhat similar entries of NRY/mtDNA haplogroups into Polynesia, haplotype sharing suggests an earlier appearance of Melanesian haplogroups than those from Asia. Surprisingly, we identified gradients in the frequency distribution of some NRY/mtDNA haplogroups across Polynesia and a gradual west-to-east decrease of overall NRY/mtDNA diversity, not only providing evidence for a west-to-east direction of Polynesian settlements but also suggesting that Pacific voyaging was regular rather than haphazard. We also demonstrate that Fiji played a pivotal role in the history of Polynesia: humans probably first migrated to Fiji, and subsequent settlement of Polynesia probably came from Fiji.
Key Words: polynesia • Y chromosome • mtDNA • genetic origins • human population history
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