via Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 5 January 2021: DNA from 2,200-year-old skeletons in Guam are closely linked to indigenous people of the northern Philippines, shedding new light on the migration routes taken by Austronesian-speaking peoples originating from Taiwan.
We know more about the settlement of Polynesia than we do about the settlement of the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific. There is debate over where people came from to get to the Marianas, with various lines of evidence pointing to the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, or the Bismarck Archipelago, and over how the ancestors of the present Mariana Islanders, the Chamorro, might be related to Polynesians. We analyzed ancient DNA from Guam from two skeletons dating to ∼2,200 y ago and found that their ancestry is linked to the Philippines. Moreover, they are closely related to early Lapita skeletons from Vanuatu and Tonga, suggesting that the early Mariana Islanders may have been involved in the colonization of Polynesia.
Source: Ancient DNA from Guam and the peopling of the Pacific | PNAS
See also:
- Ancient DNA sheds light on the peopling of the Mariana Islands | NewsWise, 22 Dec 2020
- First Mariana Islanders Came from Philippines, New Study Shows | Sci News, 23 Dec 2020
- Ancient DNA reveals Guam ancestors migrated from Taiwan, Philippines | Taiwan News, 24 Dec 2020
- DNA from Guam’s indigenous peoples traced to Taiwan: study | Focus Taiwan, 24 Dec 2020
- Guam Aborigines likely related to Taiwanese: study | Taipei Times, 25 Dec 2020
- Chamoru ancestry linked to the Philippines, Taiwan | The Guam Daily Post, 28 Dec 2020
