Posted on 03/13/2007 11:22:38 AM PDT by blam
Source: Durham University
Date: March 13, 2007
Pig Study Forces Rethink Of Pacific Colonisation
Science Daily — A survey of wild and domestic pigs has caused archaeologists to reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the migration routes humans travelled to reach the remote Pacific.
Scientists from Durham University and the University of Oxford, studying DNA and tooth shape in modern and ancient pigs, have revealed that, in direct contradiction to longstanding ideas, ancient human colonists may have originated in Vietnam and travelled between numerous islands before first reaching New Guinea, and later landing on Hawaii and French Polynesia.
Using mitochondrial DNA obtained from modern and ancient pigs across East Asia and the Pacific, the researchers demonstrated that a single genetic heritage is shared by modern Vietnamese wild boar, modern feral pigs on the islands of Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea, ancient Lapita pigs in Near Oceania, and modern and ancient domestic pigs on several Pacific Islands.
The study results, published today in the prestigious academic journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, contradict established models of human migration which assert that the ancestors of Pacific islanders originated in Taiwan or Island Southeast Asia, and travelled along routes that pass through the Philippines as they dispersed into the remote Pacific.
The research was funded by funded by the Wellcome Trust, the Leverhulme Trust, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Fyssen Foundation.
Research project director, Dr Keith Dobney, a Wellcome Trust senior research fellow with the Department of Archaeology at Durham University, said: "Many archaeologists have assumed that the combined package of domestic animals and cultural artefacts associated with the first Pacific colonizers originated in the same place and was then transported with people as a single unit.
"Our study shows that this assumption may be too simplistic, and that different elements of the package, including pigs, probably took different routes through Island South East Asia, before being transported into the Pacific.'
Archaeological evidence suggests that early farmers moved from mainland East Asia through Island Southeast Asia and on into Oceania, bringing their domestic plants, animals and specific pottery styles with them. Other sources of evidence, including human genetic and linguistic data, appear to support the traditional model that Pacific colonists first began their journey in Taiwan.
Greger Larson, lead author of the paper, performed the genetic work while at the University of Oxford. He is now due to join Durham University in August as a Research Councils UK Research Fellow.
He said: "Pigs are good swimmers, but not good enough to reach Hawaii. Given the distances between islands, pigs must have been transported and are thus excellent proxies of human movement. In this case, they have helped us open a new window into the history of human colonization of the Pacific.
"We are confident that this research will inspire geneticists and archaeologists to consider both alternative colonization routes, and more complex, and perhaps more accurate, theories about the nature of human colonization and the animals they carried with them."
The specimens used in these analyses came from the jaw bones or teeth of museum and archaeological specimens and the hair from more recent specimens.
Reference: Phylogeny and Ancient DNA of Sus Provides New Insights into Neolithic Expansion in Island Southeast Asia and Oceania by Greger Larson et al. appears in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 12-16 March 2007: http://www.pnas.org
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Durham University.
GGG Ping.
From a different source...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1799944/posts
Interesting, but is there any reason why people mightn't have spread out from Taiwan and the pigs been introduced later by traders?
That'll teach me not to do a search.
Or maybe the simpler explanation is that, in those days, pigs could fly.
That's in line with the theories of Professor Stepehn Oppenheimer, covered in his excellent book linked below.
Book Description
A book that completely changes the established and conventional view of prehistory by relocating the lost 'Eden' - the cradle of civilisation - to Southeast Asia
Synopsis
At the end of the Ice Age, Southeast Asia formed a continent twice the size of India. The South China Sea, the Gulf of Thailand and the Java Sea, which were all dry, formed the connecting parts of the continent.
Geologically, this half-sunken continent is the Sunda shelf of Sundaland. In Eden in the East Stephen Oppenheimer puts forward the astonishing argument that here in Southeast Asia was the cradle of civilisation that fertilised the great cultures of China, India, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Crete six thousand years ago.
He produces evidence from ethnography, archaeology, oceanography, from Creation stories, myths and sagas, and from linguistics and DNA analysis, to argue that this founder-civilisation was destroyed by the catastrophic flood, caused by a rapid rise in sea level at the end of the last Ice Age.
Wow! Thanks. That geologic history surely has to be accounted for in any serious work.
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