Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Pig DNA: Pacific Colonizers originated in Vietnam, not Taiwan

A new study on pig DNA says it's Vietnam:

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.

Source


I may be prejudiced, but it seems to me that there is no contradiction here. Pigs came from one place and were carried to and from places where people already were.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is reasonable to follow the possibility that pigs in Asia originated in Vietnam. However it was not just Vietnamese who moved them all over Asia and the Pacific islands. I am sure the Melanesians have the same pig ancestries.

Anonymous said...

Not just the vietnamese. But the pigs originated in Vietnam.

Anonymous said...

If the pigs are from Vietnam then it must have been the vietnamese who moved them somewhere outside Vietnam.