Posted on 07/05/2005 6:34:19 AM PDT by Pharmboy
A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swathe of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported on Monday.
Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan.
Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes -- who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese -- show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported.
Indigenous Taiwanese, Melanesian and Polynesian populations share three specific mutations in their mitochondrial DNA that are not found in mainland east Asian populations, they report in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.
Their findings suggest that Taiwanese aboriginal populations have been genetically isolated from mainland Chinese for between 10,000 and 20,000 years, and that the original Polynesian migrants originated from people identical to the aboriginal Taiwanese.
Earlier studies have looked at the Y chromosome, which men pass along from father to son.
No Y chromosome link has been found between the early residents of the island of Formosa and the Polynesians, which could suggest early Oceanic societies organized around wives and mothers, the researchers, who included a team at Estonian Biocenterin Tartu, Estonia, said.
Ping...
i just knew that chiang had kicked them off the island!
just kidding!
do not wet your panties.
Interesting point...and not more than a few clicks away from what could actually happen.
Indigenous Taiwanese Kids
Polynesian Children
Yeah--I can buy it.
So where did the "first" woman live? Do the scientist know?
Some clock.
Oh great my Brother in Law is going to crap - now that China has a legal right to Hawaii - So much for the self Governance proposal from Senator Akaka ("Akaka" that's Klingon isn't it?)
Indigenous Taiwanese tribes may be a branch of the ancestors Polynesians are descended from.
The genetic data suggests two possibilities.
The first is that Polynesians are descendants of the Taiwanese tribes.
The second is that the Taiwanese tribes and the Polynesians branched from the same mother stock around the same time, such that the mitochondrial DNA would be indistinguishable between the parent stocks for both branches.
A third, far less probable, possibility is that the genetic similarities between the mitochondrial DNA of both branches occurred separately, and such similarities are merely coincidence... Chances being anywhere from no chance in Hell, to no chance in purgatory, of such a coincidence ever occurring naturally in nature.
Last I heard, there was no evidence of any human occupation of Polynesia before the Polynesians.
You left out the fourth and even far less probable, that both populations are human/alien hybrids, using the same human and alien stock...
bump!
So much for the late Thor Heyerdahl's theories. Too bad, I liked them.
Even more interesting will be the Mormon response as their thesis has populations coming from the middle east.
Anyone care to explain this reasoning? "No Y chromosome link has been found between the early residents of the island of Formosa and the Polynesians, which could suggest early Oceanic societies organized around wives and mothers."
GGG ping
That's the "Evil Doctor Yakob" thesis the Nation of Islam tries to peddle. Still, may be something to it, eh?!
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