A study finds successive waves of human migration to the Philippine Islands. The Philippine Islands are situated at a crossroads of human migration, yet the history of the population and colonization of the islands is not fully understood. Maximilian Larena, Mattias Jakobsson, and colleagues collected around 2.3 million genotypes from 1,028 people representing 115 Philippine indigenous populations, as well as ancient genome sequences from two individuals, around 8,000 years old, from the island of Liangdao in the Taiwan Strait. The results suggest that the Philippines were populated in at least five waves, beginning with Negritos, distantly related to Australian and Papuan populations, and were followed by Manobo, Sama, Papuan, and Cordilleran groups. The Cordilleran group diverged from indigenous Taiwan groups at least 8,000 years ago, predating the arrival of rice paddy agriculture around 2,500 years ago and contradicting a previous theory that language, culture, and agriculture arrived together in the Philippines from Taiwan. The authors also found that less than 1% of individuals exhibited genetic signs from West Eurasia, suggesting a limited effect of Spanish colonization on the genetic character of the Philippines. According to the authors, the results show a multilayered genetic history of the Philippines, which served as a gateway for migration that changed the genetic landscape of the Asia-Pacific region.
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Article #20-26132:
"Multiple migrations to the Philippines during the last 50,000 years," by Maximilian Larena et al.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Maximilian Larena,
Uppsala University, SWEDEN;
email: <maximilian.larena@ebc.uu.se>