Polynesian Ancient DNA

A review of ancient DNA tests from Polynesia reveals that the human samples date from early contact with Europeans and unsurprisingly is essentially the same as modern samples.  But, modern human samples from the region and animal DNA samples from Polynesia have shed light on the subject.  The following translation of the linked blog post per Google translate states (emphasis added) that:

Archaeology has shown that the population of Oceania is made from Oceania close and not from America. This has been validated by the first genetic studies that have highlighted the Polynesian mitochondrial pattern. Thus the first human settlement of the area dated from 50,000 to 30,000 years has been associated with mitochondrial haplogroups M, O, P and S in Australia, and P, Q and some specific branches of M (M27, M28 and M29) in New Guinea and Near Oceania, and the Y chromosome haplogroups K, M and C.

Population genetics of Polynesia has also shown that the origin of this population is in Southeast Asia and more specifically on the island of Taiwan. And mitochondrial haplogroup B4a1a1 is characteristic of these populations and defined the Polynesian motif. The ancestral haplogroup B4a1a is clearly of Asian origin, and is located in Taiwan and the Southeast Asian islands. The Y chromosome haplogroup O also corresponds to the dispersion of the Austronesian Pacific.

Genetic studies on the whole genome were also performed. So they have shown that Asian ancestry remains low among populations of New Guinea (under 20%). By cons in Polynesian populations, Asian ancestry is 87% while the descent near Oceania reached only 13%. . . .

The first approach was to study the animals and plants associated with human migrations. Thus the first animal study was the Pacific rat that served food in the area. This animal does not exist in Taiwan and therefore had to be incorporated in the culture Lapita its diffusion route. Mitochondrial analysis of Pacific rats did not show a single original home, but several distinct populations. The pig genetic studies have shown an origin in Vietnam. Chicken bones were found on Lapita sites in Oceania near and far. The mitochondrial DNA testing on old remnants of chickens showed that there were at least two different strains of chickens. Surprisingly, chicken bones were also found in Chile in pre-Columbian sites before the arrival of Europeans. Mitochondrial DNA of these Chilean remains belong to the same lines as the remains of the Oceania Lapita culture, which seems to show that the Polynesians reached America before the Europeans.

So, there is new ancient DNA confirmation from pre-Columbian chicken bones in Chile of Polynesian contact with South America. But, pre-Columbian Polynesian contact still dates only to sometime in the vicinity of 800 CE to 1200 CE, three to seven centuries before Columbus arrives, and at about the same time, plus or minus a couple of centuries, as Lief Erikson reached North America from Iceland with a similarly minor amount of sustained impact.

Near Oceania, in this context, refers to Pacific Islands settled before the Austronesians arrived, a region that includes the island of Yap discussed in the previous post at this blog (which is point number 12 on the map in this 1998 open access genetics paper).