Population Migration Theory Gets Overturned In Indonesia

Saturday, May 24, 2008 - 13:07 in Paleontology & Archaeology

When it comes to the original migration to the Islands of Southeast Asia (ISEA - namely, the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo), the prevailing theory has been the "out of Taiwan" model - a Neolithic expansion from Taiwan driven by rice agriculture about 4,000 years ago. Researchers say they have discovered genetic evidence that overturns that theory and takes the timeline back by nearly 10,000 years. The international research team, led by the UK’s first Professor of Archaeogenetics, Martin Richards, has shown that a substantial fraction of their mitochondrial DNA lineages (inherited down the female line of descent), have been evolving within ISEA for a much longer period, possibly since modern humans arrived some 50,000 years ago. read more

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