May 20, 2008

Paternal genetic affinity between western Austronesians and Daic populations

BMC Evol Biol. 2008 May 15;8(1):146.

Paternal genetic affinity between western Austronesians and Daic populations.

Li H, Wen B, Chen SJ, Su B, Pramoonjago P, Liu Y, Pan S, Qin Z, Liu W, Cheng X, Yang N, Li X, Tran D, Lu D, Hsu MT, Deka R, Marzuki S, Tan CC, Jin L.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Austronesian is a linguistic family spread in most areas of the Southeast Asia, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. Based on their linguistic similarity, this linguistic family included Malayo-Polynesians and Taiwan aborigines. The linguistic similarity also led to the controversial hypothesis that Taiwan is the homeland of all the Malayo-Polynesians, a hypothesis that has been debated by ethnologists, linguists, archaeologists, and geneticists. It is well accepted that the Eastern Austronesians (Micronesians and Polynesians) derived from the Western Austronesians (Island Southeast Asians and Taiwanese), and that the Daic populations on the mainland are supposed to be the headstream of all the Austronesian populations. RESULTS: In this report, we studied 20 SNPs and 7 STRs in the non-recombining region of the 1,509 Y chromosomes from 30 China Daic populations, 23 Indonesian and Vietnam Malayo-Polynesian populations, and 11 Taiwan aboriginal populations. These three groups show many resemblances in paternal lineages. Admixture analyses demonstrated that the Daic populations are hardly influenced by Han Chinese genetically, and that they make up the largest proportion of Indonesians. Most of the population samples contain a high frequency of haplogroup O1a-M119, which is nearly absent in other ethnic families. The STR network of haplogroup O1a* illustrated that Indonesian lineages did not derive from Taiwan aborigines as linguistic studies suggest, but from Daic populations. CONCLUSION: We show that, in contrast to the Taiwan homeland hypothesis, the Island Southeast Asians do not have a Taiwan origin based on their paternal lineages. Furthermore, we show that both Taiwan aborigines and Indonesians likely derived from the Daic populations based on their paternal lineages. These two populations seem to have evolved independently of each other. Our results indicate that a super-phylum, which includes Taiwan aborigines, Daic, and Malayo-Polynesians, is genetically educible.

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5 comments:

Richard Parker said...

This is great stuff. At last someone is going back to the beginning, ie SE Asian Mainland, and not working back from the glamourous hula-hooping Polynesians, or constructing houses of cards on the supposedly multiglot Formosans (Taiwanese).

I can well imagine Daic (Tai-Kadai) speakers on the South China/Vietnam coast, being pushed out of there by marine transgressions (flooding to you and I), with a few going north, but the majority following the shoreline to ISEA, dispersing, and pushing the 'aboriginals' up into the mountains. There seem to have been several waves of this activity.

This is the first genetic article I have seen that attacks the 'Taiwan Homeland
Hypothesis' head-on, and I welcome it.

But there are some problems:
- Cham was a Vietnamese Austronesian group which almost certainly came _from_ Malaya, and didn't go _to_ it. The Tsat on Hainan Island were probably refugees from whoever did in the Vietnamese Cham Kingdom, relatively recently.
http://tinyurl.com/598xao

- Laurent Sagart (a very distinguished linguist) works out just how the Daics (Tai Kadai) left Taiwan - ie, in the opposite direction from the evidence in the above paper, at:
http://tinyurl.com/2njwtf
Where he bases some 90% of his theory on close study of numeral terms (he must be a nutter like me).

I could go on and on, but I won't. This is one of the very few studies coming from indigenous South East Asians, and I welcome their input, in contrast to that of academics living in Australia or Hawaii.

Unknown said...

Totally agree with you . At the same time when we are blaming prejudice, this article need to look at more details when they are making a bold statement.

Less details on o2a-95 even though it is majority.

"Taking the results of diversity and divergence together, the
Daic population group is likely the ancestral group from which the Indonesians and
Taiwan aborigines derived separately in paternal lineages. Other haplogroups of Y
chromosomes (e.g. O3-M122, O2a-M95) displayed a similar pattern as O1a*,
showing that the Daic group is genetically closer to Indonesians and Taiwan
aborigines than these latter two groups are to each other (Table 3). Interestingly, O2a
may be traced even further to Austro-Asiatic populations as suggested by a recent
study "

terryt said...

From the article: "CONCLUSION: We show that, in contrast to the Taiwan homeland hypothesis, the Island Southeast Asians do not have a Taiwan origin based on their paternal lineages".

But hang on. None of the "academics living in Australia or Hawaii" ever claimed the Y-chromosome came from Taiwan. In fact that was the most interesting thing. The Polynesian language and mtDNA came for there but the Y-chromosome comes from a wider region of SE Asia. This presented a problem for those who insisted language should be associated with male movement.

Ebizur said...

My main complaint about this study is that, like many others, it has deftly sidestepped the question of the affiliation of the (quite numerous) haplogroup O-M175 Y-chromosomes that do not belong to any of the subclades O1a-M119, O2a-M95, and O3-M122. These Y-chromosomes comprise nearly 15% of the total Daic Y-DNA genepool, but they are not given any consideration at all.

Unknown said...

THANK YOU! This has got to be one of my best reads for the day! BTW these guys are good, finally someone gets its right. The Chinese are good! Sagart's theory was wacko jacko!