ena-STUDY-UPPSALA UNIVERISTY-12-02-2021-12:11:49:359-791
Genetic origins and affiliations of ancient Liangdao individuals
Island Southeast Asia has recently produced several surprises regarding human history, but the region's complex demography remains poorly understood. Here, we report ~2.3 million genotypes from 1028 individuals representing 115 indigenous Philippine populations and genome-sequence data from two ~8000-year-old individuals from Liangdao in the Taiwan Strait. We show that the Philippine islands were populated by at least five waves of human migration: initially by Northern and Southern Negritos (distantly related to Australian and Papuan groups), followed by Manobo, Sama, Papuan and Cordilleran-related populations. The ancestors of Cordillerans diverged from indigenous peoples of Taiwan at least ~8,000 years ago, prior to the arrival of paddy field rice agriculture in the Philippines ~2,500 years ago, where some of their descendants remain to be the least admixed East Asian groups carrying an ancestry shared by all Austronesian-speaking populations. These observations contradict an exclusive 'Out-of-Taiwan' model of farming-language-people dispersal within the last four millennia for the Philippines and Island Southeast Asia. Sama-related ethnic groups of southwestern Philippines additionally experienced some minimal South Asian gene flow starting ~1,000 years ago. Lastly, only a few lowlanders, accounting for < 1% of all individuals, presented with low level signal of West Eurasian admixture, indicating a limited genetic legacy of Spanish colonization in the Philippines. Altogether, our findings reveal a multilayered history of the Philippines, which served as a crucial gateway for the movement of people that ultimately changed the genetic landscape of the Asia-Pacific region.
Island Southeast Asia has recently produced several surprises regarding human history, but the region's complex demography remains poorly understood. Here, we report ~2.3 million genotypes from 1028 individuals representing 115 indigenous Philippine populations and genome-sequence data from two ~8000-year-old individuals from Liangdao in the Taiwan Strait. We show that the Philippine islands were populated by at least five waves of human migration: initially by Northern and Southern Negritos (distantly related to Australian and Papuan groups), followed by Manobo, Sama, Papuan and Cordilleran-related populations. The ancestors of Cordillerans diverged from indigenous peoples of Taiwan at least ~8,000 years ago, prior to the arrival of paddy field rice agriculture in the Philippines ~2,500 years ago, where some of their descendants remain to be the least admixed East Asian groups carrying an ancestry shared by all Austronesian-speaking populations. These observations contradict an exclusive 'Out-of-Taiwan' model of farming-language-people dispersal within the last four millennia for the Philippines and Island Southeast Asia. Sama-related ethnic groups of southwestern Philippines additionally experienced some minimal South Asian gene flow starting ~1,000 years ago. Lastly, only a few lowlanders, accounting for < 1% of all individuals, presented with low level signal of West Eurasian admixture, indicating a limited genetic legacy of Spanish colonization in the Philippines. Altogether, our findings reveal a multilayered history of the Philippines, which served as a crucial gateway for the movement of people that ultimately changed the genetic landscape of the Asia-Pacific region.