What is the origin of the Polynesian people?

Question

What is the origin of the Polynesian people?

Answer 1

While current evidence indicates the origin of the Polynesians was Taiwan before that their ancestors probably lived in the now drowned Sundaland area.

This would explain the spread of Austronesian languages?

Answer 2

Recent maternal mitochondrial DNA analysis suggests that Polynesians, including Tongans, Samoans, Niueans, Cook Islanders, Tahitians, Hawaiians, Marquesans and Ma-ori, are genetically linked to indigenous peoples of parts of Southeast Asia including those of Taiwan. This DNA evidence is supported by linguistic and archaeological evidence. Recent studies into paternal Y chromosome analysis shows that Polynesians are also genetically linked to peoples of Melanesia... Therefore it is current belief that the Polynesian people are a hybrid race between indigenous peoples of parts of Southeast Asia and peoples of Melanesia, though it has not been proven.

Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread through island South-East Asia – almost certainly starting out from Taiwan – into the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia. In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with a degree of certainty. In the mid 2nd millennium BC a distinctive culture appeared suddenly in north-west Melanesia, in the Bismarck Archipelago, the chain of islands forming a great arch from New Britain to the Admiralty Islands. This culture, known as Lapita, stands out in the Melanesian archeological record, with its large permanent villages on beach terraces along the coasts. Particularly characteristic of the Lapita culture is the making of pottery, including a great many vessels of varied shapes, some distinguished by fine patterns and motifs pressed into the clay. Within a mere three or four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita culture spread 6000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as Tonga and Samoa. In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed.....Archaeological evidence indicates that by about 700 AD, the Polynesians had settled the vast Polynesian triangle with its northern corner at Hawai'i, the eastern corner at Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and the southern corner in New Zealand.  The Polynesian voyagers reached the South American mainland and there are suggestions that they made contact with indigenous South Americans. Carbon-dating of chicken bones found by Chilean archaeologists on the Arauco Peninsula in south-central Chile date from between 1321 and 1407 AD. DNA analysis of the bones match those found in prehistoric samples from Tonga and American Samoa, and a near identical match from Rapa Nui (Easter Island). The sweet potato, known in Polynesian languages as kumara or kumala is widely grown around the Pacific but originated in the Andes. There are also linguistic similarities - sweet potato is kumar in Peru. There is no conclusive evidence that Pacific peoples actually settled on the South American mainland or that South American peoples voyaged into the Pacific.

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The question surrounding the colonization of Polynesia has remained controversial. Two hypotheses, one postulating Taiwan as the putative homeland and the other asserting a Melanesian origin of the Polynesian people, have received considerable attention. In this work, we present haplotype data based on the distribution of 19 biallelic polymorphisms on the Y chromosome in a sample of 551 male individuals from 36 populations living in Southeast Asia, Taiwan, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Surprisingly, nearly none of the Taiwanese Y haplotypes were found in Micronesia and Polynesia. Likewise, a Melanesian-specific haplotype was not found among the Polynesians. However, all of the Polynesian, Micronesian, and Taiwanese haplotypes are present in the extant Southeast Asian populations. Evidently, the Y-chromosome data do not lend support to either of the prevailing hypotheses. Rather, we postulate that Southeast Asia provided a genetic source for two independent migrations, one toward Taiwan and the other toward Polynesia through island Southeast Asia.  The major prehistoric events leading to the settlement of Polynesia have been examined from various perspectives, and two different models of population movements are proposed. The first of these, dubbed the “express train” model, based primarily on archeological and linguistic evidence, claims that about 4,000 to 5,000 years B.P. a rapid eastward migration of humans began in Southern China spreading Austronesian language and the associated Lapita culture through the Pacific islands and culminating in the colonization of Polynesia. In this model, Taiwan, which is adjacent to the Asian mainland, was colonized first. This hypothesis is supported by recent mtDNA data, which tie the Taiwanese aborigines with the Polynesians. The second hypothesis proposed by Terrell asserts a neighboring homeland of the Polynesians in Melanesia, in which the Polynesians evolved in a complex nexus of interactions among the already settled Pacific islanders.  Although most genetic evidence favors the former hypothesis, the debate continues and other plausible scenarios are being examined as well. Notably, Richards et al.  recently suggested that evidence from mtDNA data is, in fact, more consistent with an origin in eastern Indonesia.  In recent years, the power of Y-chromosome markers in resolving evolutionary histories of human populations has been greatly recognized. This is so because markers on the nonrecombining portion of the Y chromosome allow construction of intact haplotypes and thus, male-mediated migration can be readily recognized. Identification of a large number of biallelic markers on the Y chromosome has augmented such studies. In this study, we have reviewed the origin of the Polynesian people from this angle through an analysis of 19 biallelic markers on 551 males derived from 36 populations living in greater Southeast Asia, Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.  (article continues with Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion...)

Closing paragraph:

mtDNA data suggested a spread of humans from Taiwan to Polynesia by way of a corridor through the Philippines and Indonesia. A pattern involving nucleotide substitutions in the control region of the mtDNA genome, dubbed the Polynesian motif, was found in high frequencies in this corridor with the highest in Polynesia. Related types of this motif also were found in appreciable frequencies in this area of distribution and the Taiwanese populations showed the highest diversity. Based on these observations, the origin of the Polynesian motif was traced to Taiwan, which seemed to provide strong genetic support to the express train hypothesis. A recent reanalysis of the published mtDNA data, however, questioned the validity of this proposition. Richards et al. argued that, based on assessment of divergence times for the motif and age estimates of the relevant populations, mtDNA data do not support a Taiwanese origin of the Polynesians. Rather, the evidence is more consistent with an island Southeast Asian ancestry, the homeland being in eastern Indonesia. Although our findings are more in line with this general position, the Y-chromosome data do not unequivocally point to “a center of origin” of the Polynesian people, and island Southeast Asia emerges more likely as a midway station en route to Polynesia. Further in the context of the Polynesian motif, we found that one of the derivatives, a CAT substitution, is distributed all over Southeast Asia including southern China. With the Polynesian motif not being discretely associated with the Taiwanese and island Southeast Asians alone on one hand, and the distribution pattern of the Y-chromosome haplotypes presented here on the other, the greater Southeast Asian enclave assumes the ancestral position in the cascade of Pacific colonization.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/article...

Answer 3

Polynesian History and Origin:

http://www.pbs.org/wayfinders/polynesian...