Marc Verha
Wed, Mar-26-08, 06:16
Mol Biol Evol. 2008 Mar 21 [Epub ahead of print] Climate
Change and Post-Glacial Human Dispersals in Southeast Asia.
Soares P, Trejaut JA, Loo JH, Hill C, Mormina M, Lee CL, Chen
YM, Hudjashov G, Forster P, Macaulay V, Bulbeck D, Oppenheimer
S, Lin M, Richards MB.
Modern humans have been living in Island Southeast Asia
(ISEA) for at least 50,000 years. Largely because of the
influence of linguistic studies, however, which have a
shallow time depth, the attention of archaeologists and
geneticists has usually been focused on the last 6000
years - in particular, on a proposed Neolithic dispersal
from China and Taiwan. Here we use complete mitochondrial
DNA (mtDNA) genome sequencing to spotlight some earlier
processes that clearly had a major role in the demographic
history of the region but have hitherto been unrecognised.
We show that haplogroup E, an important component of mtDNA
diversity in the region, evolved in situ over the last
35,000 years and expanded dramatically throughout ISEA
around the beginning of the Holocene, at the time when the
ancient continent of Sundaland was being broken up into
the present-day archipelago by rising sea levels. It
reached Taiwan and Near Oceania more recently, within the
last approximately 8000 years. This suggests that global
warming and sea-level rises at the end of the Ice Age,
15,000-7000 years ago, were the main forces shaping modern
human diversity in the region.
Change and Post-Glacial Human Dispersals in Southeast Asia.
Soares P, Trejaut JA, Loo JH, Hill C, Mormina M, Lee CL, Chen
YM, Hudjashov G, Forster P, Macaulay V, Bulbeck D, Oppenheimer
S, Lin M, Richards MB.
Modern humans have been living in Island Southeast Asia
(ISEA) for at least 50,000 years. Largely because of the
influence of linguistic studies, however, which have a
shallow time depth, the attention of archaeologists and
geneticists has usually been focused on the last 6000
years - in particular, on a proposed Neolithic dispersal
from China and Taiwan. Here we use complete mitochondrial
DNA (mtDNA) genome sequencing to spotlight some earlier
processes that clearly had a major role in the demographic
history of the region but have hitherto been unrecognised.
We show that haplogroup E, an important component of mtDNA
diversity in the region, evolved in situ over the last
35,000 years and expanded dramatically throughout ISEA
around the beginning of the Holocene, at the time when the
ancient continent of Sundaland was being broken up into
the present-day archipelago by rising sea levels. It
reached Taiwan and Near Oceania more recently, within the
last approximately 8000 years. This suggests that global
warming and sea-level rises at the end of the Ice Age,
15,000-7000 years ago, were the main forces shaping modern
human diversity in the region.