RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Reconstructing Austronesian population history in Island Southeast Asia
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 005603
DO 10.1101/005603
A1 Mark Lipson
A1 Po-Ru Loh
A1 Nick Patterson
A1 Priya Moorjani
A1 Ying-Chin Ko
A1 Mark Stoneking
A1 Bonnie Berger
A1 David Reich
YR 2014
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2014/05/27/005603.abstract
AB Austronesian languages are spread across half the globe, from Easter Island to Madagascar. Evidence from linguistics and archaeology indicates that the “Austronesian expansion,” which began 4–5 thousand years ago, likely had roots in Taiwan, but the ancestry of present-day Austronesian-speaking populations remains controversial. Here, focusing primarily on Island Southeast Asia, we analyze genome-wide data from 56 populations using new methods for tracing ancestral gene flow. We show that all sampled Austronesian groups harbor ancestry that is more closely related to aboriginal Taiwanese than to any present-day mainland population. Surprisingly, western Island Southeast Asian populations have also inherited ancestry from a source nested within the variation of present-day populations speaking Austro-Asiatic languages, which have historically been nearly exclusive to the mainland. Thus, either there was once a substantial Austro-Asiatic presence in Island Southeast Asia, or Austronesian speakers migrated to and through the mainland, admixing there before continuing to western Indonesia.