91: Polynesia's Taiwan roots

There was an article labeled Hawaiiki is Taiwan based on the revelation that DNA from Taiwan was in Polynesian DNA. Ok, that may be true, but Hawaiiki is where the Polynesians sailed from, not where the DNA originated. So that article was typical of media sensationalist headlines.

Anyway, here is the article - it poses some interesting facts.

Hawaiiki is Taiwan- Maori men and women from different homelands

According to legend Maori landed on the shores of Aotearoa/New Zealand around 700 years ago from a mythical place called Hawaiki - but research could dramatically alter this theory. At Victoria University in Wellington, the map of Maori migration is being rewritten. Combining several scientific discoveries, researchers say Austronesian-speaking people left Taiwan about 5000 years ago. In, what's considered to be a "fast migration" they moved through the Philippines, Indonesia and other Melanesian islands like Papua New Guinea. As they went, there was intermarriage and they reached remote parts of Polynesia some 2500 years ago. Their last push was to New Zealand, about 700 years ago. Using DNA, radio carbon and computer simulations, Victoria University scientist Adele Whyte of Ngati Kahungunu descent, has worked out that 190 women were in that last push to New Zealand. And there were probably more men, suggesting more than seven waka were used. "That proves it wasn't an accident. It was definitely a planned settlement. They bought plants and animals with them, that's not a fishing trip blown off course. "It blows out of the water any theories that Maori got here by accident," Whyte says. "Whenever I go onto a marae, the first thing people ask is what is your iwi. I guess this study is like an extension of this. Finding out who our family is... who our cousins out there in the Pacific."

Petroglyphs form Formosa (Taiwan)

But what if those ancestors stretched to the very edge of the Pacific? Using DNA, Whyte traced female Maori ancestry to east Polynesia and Asia. Whyte has not pinpointed where exactly in Asia, but other scientific research has. Victoria University biologist Dr Geoff Chambers discovered Maori had just one gene marker for coping with drinking alcohol. When he looked at the same gene markers in tribes who've lived in Taiwan for 6000 years, he found a match. "It turned out, that like the New Zealand Maori they only had one of those markers too," Chambers says. Could it be that Hawaiiki, the mythical Maori homeland, is a 4000-year misty memory in the valleys of Taiwan? The trail for the ground zero of Maori genes led the Sunday team high into the Taiwan mountains.

(here’s where we interject: Hawaiiki is where they sailed from, not where their very distant ancestors came from. You have to wonder about academics when they come up with stupid statements like this) Bunun, Amis and Yami are three southern indigenous tribes among nine recognised by Taiwan's government. They are fiercely independent and several tribes practiced head-hunting. Descendants of pre-historic travellers, the tribes people were great mountain hunters and seafarers. For thousands of years they kept to their tribal lands and until recently, they rarely mixed with other tribes or other nationalities. Their language part of the Austronesian-tongue, their genes preserved, but their culture now struggling to survive.

Research into DNA sequencing is being done by Morrocan-born Jean Trejaut. He's been able to accurately pinpoint the southern Taiwanese tribal links with Maori, in particular the Amis people from east coast of Taiwan - the closest genetic match to Maori located beside Bunan territory. Robert Kaiwai, who works in Taiwan for New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said he felt a powerful bond with people from Tawain's indigenous tribes when he travelled to the south. The male and female ancestors of today’s Maori people of New Zealand originated from different parts of the world, molecular biologists have said. By comparing the DNA of people from Asia, across the Pacific Ocean and New Zealand, Whyte and Chambers have revealed a 'living genetic map' of ancient Maori migration routes. The findings confirm archaeological evidence that the ancestors of today’s Maori originally set out from mainland south-east Asia 6,000 years ago, hopped from island to island, starting with Taiwan, and arrived in New Zealand 800 to 1,000 years ago. However the research also brings startlingly new evidence that as Maori ancestors migrated one group of islands to the next, men from Melanesian communities joined the boats. This changed the genetic mix, and lead to the differences observed in the genetic make-up of today’s Maori men and women. The research involved two separate genetic mapping processes. The Southeast Asian homeland was confirmed by Chambers’ research into the frequency of two different genes that influence the body’s reaction to alcohol. He found that while Asian people have both gene types, Maori and Pacific Islanders have inherited only one. He looked back along the trail of migration to try and work out where the gene was lost. The indigenous people from Taiwan have both genes, but a lower frequency of one - the very gene that the Maori now lack. “We think this one was lost at the first step of migration, when people left what is now Taiwan,” Chambers told ABC Science Online. The second mapping process involved Whyte’s examination of sex-linked genetic markers, namely mitochondrial DNA in women, and Y-chromosomes in men. The research found that in addition to the alcohol genes, female Maori have other genetic markers which confirm their ancient Asian origin. To her surprise, however, the men have genetic markers that show a Melanesian ancestry. “As a result of intermarriage along the migration trail, the signatures of the mitochondrial DNA from women have stayed more ‘island south-east Asian’, and the Y-chromosomes are more Melanesian,” Whyte told ABC Science Online. We think both men and women set off together, and recruited local guides who were probably men. Women stayed with the south-east Asian populations, and Melanesian men were recruited along the way.” Whyte also analysed the ‘haplotypes’ (groups of closely linked genes) carried on mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the female line. Each population has a unique range of haplotypes. While Europeans have over 100 haplotypes in a particular region of DNA, studies so far have only found four different Maori haplotypes in the same region. “The reason for this difference is what we call a genetic bottleneck. When people leave an island to go to the next island, obviously not everybody gets on the boat, so some of the genetic diversity is being lost,” she said. “Some of the maternal lineages may not have got on the boat, so they’re not carried on to the next place.” Whyte has now identified 10 haplotypes in New Zealand Maori. “From that we have worked out that 56 women came to New Zealand to create the diversity of today’s population,” she added. Whyte said these findings were consistent with Maori legend. “The story I was told when I was growing up is that there was a fleet of seven great waka (canoes) that came to New Zealand," she said. "Every tribe knows which waka their ancestors arrived in. My ancestors were in a waka called Takitimu. “There might have been 20 people travelling in a canoe the size of a waka. Seven waka, that’s about 140 people. And if, as we think, about half or 56 of these people happen to be women, it does seem to tie in.”