Man's Moves Were Boar-ing
By Hannah Isom
Those of you who have ever pondered the early human colonisation patterns of East Asia (and let’s face it, who hasn’t?) may be surprised to hear that the study of pigs has turned long-standing theories upside down. Scientists from Durham and Oxford universities have published findings of a survey of domestic pigs that has got archaeologists scratching their noggins.
The results of the survey, which studied DNA from the cells of modern and ancient pigs across East Asia and the Pacific, contradict established theories about the origins of the first human Pacific colonists and their migration routes. If this new evidence is to be believed, then it seems that our Pacific-dwelling cousins may have originated in Vietnam, before island hopping to New Guinea, Hawaii and French Polynesia.
So what do pigs have to do with the migration of our ancestors? Well it was discovered that modern Vietnamese wild boars share a single genetic heritage with other species of domestic and feral pigs on the islands of Java, New Guinea and several other Pacific Islands.
It is thought that early farmers moving from mainland East Asia took their pigs with them, along with other survival items also discovered by archaeologists.
“Pigs are good swimmers, but not good enough to reach Hawaii”, says Dr Greger Larson, lead author of the paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “Given the distances between islands, pigs must have been transported and are thus excellent proxies of human movement.”
Until the publication of these findings, the established theory was that human colonisers came from Taiwan, or inland Southeast Asia, and travelled through the Philippines as they dispersed across the Pacific.
Hannah's page is a portal to a world of wonder. You should try it some time.
The results of the survey, which studied DNA from the cells of modern and ancient pigs across East Asia and the Pacific, contradict established theories about the origins of the first human Pacific colonists and their migration routes. If this new evidence is to be believed, then it seems that our Pacific-dwelling cousins may have originated in Vietnam, before island hopping to New Guinea, Hawaii and French Polynesia.
So what do pigs have to do with the migration of our ancestors? Well it was discovered that modern Vietnamese wild boars share a single genetic heritage with other species of domestic and feral pigs on the islands of Java, New Guinea and several other Pacific Islands.
It is thought that early farmers moving from mainland East Asia took their pigs with them, along with other survival items also discovered by archaeologists.
“Pigs are good swimmers, but not good enough to reach Hawaii”, says Dr Greger Larson, lead author of the paper published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. “Given the distances between islands, pigs must have been transported and are thus excellent proxies of human movement.”
Until the publication of these findings, the established theory was that human colonisers came from Taiwan, or inland Southeast Asia, and travelled through the Philippines as they dispersed across the Pacific.
Hannah's page is a portal to a world of wonder. You should try it some time.
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