This is a further refinement of an already pretty well worked out story of Oceanian origins.
The ultimate source of Oceanian and Austronesian seafaring people was one of the indigenous tribes of what is now called Taiwan (we have identified which of them it was based upon linguistic evidence), via island Southeast Asia.
Before expanding very far east, however, these Formosan origin Lapita people admixed with Papuan people (in an encounter that amounted to a hostile conquest).
This "graphical abstract" really sums up a new paper on the topic.
Note that the dates in this image are "before present", i.e. before 1950 by archeological convention, and not BCE. The initial settlement of Palau was roughly contemporaneous with the Greek "dark ages" after Bronze Age collapse, for example, while the admixture of the people who settled Palau was contemporaneous with the Late Bronze Age in Europe.
An educated layman's explanation of the paper explains:
About 3200 years ago, Southeast Asian seafarers known as the Lapita pushed east into the tropical islands of the Pacific Ocean, hitting nearly every habitable isle in that corner of the globe from New Guinea to Fiji and Tonga. As they did so, they left behind artifacts of their culture, including pottery stamped with distinctive geometric patterns.But on Palau, there’s not a single shard of Lapita pottery—and the island’s inhabitants speak a language that’s distinct from the tongues spoken on other Pacific islands. So who were the first Palauans, and where did they come from?A new study published last week in Cell suggests an answer. Genetic evidence confirms Palau’s first settlers descended from Southeast Asians who had intermingled with the Papuans, Indigenous peoples who settled the island of New Guinea some 50,000 years ago.“It’s lovely to see a piece of Pacific history—which we’ve traditionally been at a bit of a loss to explain—finally start to come together into a more understandable story,” says Murray Cox, a computational biologist at Massey University of New Zealand who wasn’t involved in the new work.The discovery builds on previous ancient DNA research into the origins of the Lapita themselves. That work, led by evolutionary biologist David Reich at Harvard University and his colleagues, showed that Lapita were essentially pure Southeast Asians of Taiwanese roots—but that modern populations on Pacific islands showed Papuan ancestry, too. The studies suggested this Papuan ancestry came in about 2500 years ago, as Papuans began to join the same canoe voyages that had earlier carried Lapita settlers into the region.
From Science.
The underlying paper in Cell is as follows:
Highlights
• Ancient DNA of 21 individuals from Palau spans around 2,400 years• Papuan-East Asian admixture in Palauans predates initial settlement• Over 2,900 years of genetic continuity in Palau• Shared East Asian-Papuan admixture in Palau and eastern Indonesia
Summary
The first people reached Remote Oceania 3,000 years before present (BP), arriving roughly simultaneously in the southwest Pacific, the Marianas Archipelago, and Palau. However, no genome-wide ancient DNA data have been available from Palau, a gap we address by reporting 21 individuals from four archaeological sites dating between 2,900 and 500 BP.
All had approximately 60% ancestry related to East Asians and 40% to Papuans, similar to present-day Palauans, the longest stretch of population continuity anywhere in Remote Oceania. The lengths of contiguous Papuan ancestry segments in the oldest individuals show that major admixture between Papuans and East Asians in the ancestors of all sampled Palauans began prior to first settlement. This differs from the pattern in the southwest Pacific, where sampled individuals of the Lapita archaeological culture from three different islands had almost entirely East Asian ancestry, with large amounts of Papuan admixture observed only hundreds of years later.
Yue-Chen Liu, et al., "Papuan admixture predated the settlement of Palau" (March 10, 2026).
5 comments:
I was wondering if you'd seen this paper already:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2025/10/20/2025.10.20.683404.full.pdf
I think the paper makes a pretty convincing case for a northern/inland route for mainline East Asians' ancestors.
I think this makes sense with Y-haplogroup phylogeny, with K2a reflecting a northern/interior Initial Upper Paleolithic dispersal, and K2b reflecting a southern/coastal route (the two eventually meeting and mixing in East Asia and Siberia).
Thoughts?
I haven't seen it. Thanks for the heads up!
Abstract: "Denisovans, an extinct sister group of Neandertals who lived in Eastern Eurasia during the Middle and Late Pleistocene, are known only from a handful of skeletal remains and limited genetic data, including the high-coverage genome of a woman who lived ~65,000 years ago. Here, we present a second highquality Denisovan genome, reconstructed from a molar found at Denisova Cave. It belonged to a man who lived ~200,000 years ago in a small Denisovan group. This group mixed with early Neandertals and was then replaced by Denisovans who had mixed with later Neandertals. We show that in addition Denisovans received gene flow from hominins that diverged before the split of the ancestors of Denisovans and modern humans. The two Denisovan genomes allow us to disentangle Denisovan ancestry in present-day humans revealing contributions from at least three distinct Denisovan groups. In particular, Oceanians and South Asians independently inherited DNA from a deeply diverged Denisovan population which was likely isolated in South Asia. This supports an early migration of the ancestors of Oceanians through South Asia followed by the later arrival of the ancestors of present-day South Asians. East Asians do not share this Denisovan component in their genomes, suggesting that their ancestors arrived independently, perhaps by a northerly route. Finally, the two high-quality Denisovan genomes allow us to refine the catalogue of genetic changes that arose on the Denisovan lineage, some of which were contributed to present-day humans."
"East Asians do not share this Denisovan component in their genomes, suggesting that their ancestors arrived independently, perhaps by a northerly route." Probably mostly wrong. Dilution to almost nothing by waves that post-date Denisovan extinction is a better explanation. But, a Northern route still may make sense (for other reasons) for a significant component of Japanese ancestry.
I agree dilution is probably hiding some small amount of this Oceanian-related (yellow in Fig 6) Denisovan ancestry, but that doesn't explain why the Siberian-related (red in Fig 6) Denisovan ancestry signal is detectable but the Oceanian-related Denisovan ancestry signal is not.
Another part that I find very interesting:
"To test whether South Asians and Oceanians inherited the most divergent Denisovan DNA
component through separate events we compared the breakpoints of Denisovan-like segments among
non-Africans, assuming that segments inherited from a common introgression would share breakpoints
from past recombination events (Figure 6B). However, we found that segments identified in Oceanians
almost never share breakpoints with segments in other populations, including South Asians, while the
segments identified in other populations share breakpoints broadly across all non-Africans. This suggests
that ancestors of Oceanians inherited their Denisovan ancestry independently from other modern humans.
It further implies that although the deeply diverged Denisovan component is seen in both South Asians
and Oceanians, South Asians must have inherited it in a separate event from Oceanians. These
observations support the hypothesis that Oceanians descend from an early wave of modern humans that
reached Oceania via a route through South Asia57."
I think there's some faulty logic here on migration history, but South Asians and Oceanians inheriting Denisovan ancestry from closely related Denisovan groups in separate admixture events has some interesting implications.
I think it must mean that these two admixture events were separated by either time, by geography, or both. If we accept that the ancestors of South Asians migrated later than the ancestors of Oceanians (this is far from certain to me), that would mean there were Denisovans surviving in South Asia well after the initial migration of Oceanians.
Who were these later Denisovans? Were they living in the interior of South Asia while Oceanians followed a coastal route? Or visa versa?
One thing I can't figure out is this weird disconnect where Denisovan ancestry is highest in modern populations that were isolated from mainland Asia by the sea even during the LGM, suggesting a connection to maritime environments, but coastal populations on that were connected to the mainland (i.e. Onge and Jomon people) show the opposite trend.
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