Study: East Asians may have originated in Taiwan, dating back 5,000 years

A French study shows that aboriginal people on the island of Taiwan migrated to the Pacific coast 5,000 years ago and may have become the ancestors of East Asians. Pictured are carvings at the Taiwan Aboriginal Peoples Cultural Park in Pingtung County, Taiwan, Feb. 19, 2015.

Research by French scholars shows that the aboriginal people on the island of Taiwan migrated to the Pacific Ocean 5,000 years ago and may have become the ancestors of the East Asians.

The Pacific region can be divided into Near Oceania (Near Oceania) and Remote Oceania (Remote Oceania). The former includes Papua New Guinea, the Bismarck archipelago and the Solomons, while the latter includes Micronesia, the Santa Cruz Islands, Vanadou, New Caledonia, Fiji and Polynesia.

After early humans left the African continent, they settled in Near Oceania about 45,000 years ago; Far Oceania was inhabited only about 3,200 years ago, including the aborigines from Taiwan.

To further explore this history, scholars such as Lluis Quintana-Murci, a researcher at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), have studied the Pacific ethnographies, analyzing the genomes of 317 modern humans from 20 population groups in various regions of the Pacific.

They found that the gene pool of near-Oceanic human ancestors shrank before they settled locally, and that these humans began to disperse across the region some 20,000 to 40,000 years ago. After a long period of time, aborigines from Taiwan arrived in Near Oceania and underwent frequent genetic mixing with Near Oceanic humans.

They theorize that Taiwan aborigines migrated before the Neolithic expansion and thus became the East Asian ancestors of humans in the Pacific. It is generally believed that the Neolithic expansion began from Taiwan about 5000 years ago.

They noted that individuals from the Pacific region also carried deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) from ancient humans, Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Neanderthal genes are associated with immune system, neurodevelopment, metabolism, and skin color shades, whereas Denisovan DNA admixture primarily favors immune function.

Thus, the incorporation of Denisovan genes helped those who first landed in the Pacific to adapt to the new environment of the island’s climate, pathogens, etc.

These findings were published in the journal Nature.