The Genetics of Human Migration to Remote Oceania
The spread of Austronesian-speaking peoples around the world is an impressive and recent episode in human evolution. Scientific reconstruction of these events draws evidence from many diverse disciplines; archaeology, anthropology, linguistics and genetics. Empirical studies have produced a range of theories that account for various pattern and process elements in this story. To date it has been conventional for researchers to see these theories as being in competition with one another. However, the time now seems to be right for an emerging consensus to draw these ideas into a single unified account.
I will present data from several molecular genetic studies carried out with New Zealand Maori and other Polynesian peoples. Taken together, the results of this work can be used to test hypotheses arising from studies in other disciplines. The data support the idea that modern Polynesian people arose by mixing genepools from both Austronesian-speaking and Papuan-speaking ancestors. This conclusion leads on to a synthetic total evidence account of this phase of Austonesian prehistory.