History Forum / General / Archaeology / March 2007

Mitochondrial DNA suggests Pacific pigs started from Vietnam and had
stops at New Guinea before reaching Tahiti and Hawaii.

Academic quote of the year: "Pigs are good swimmers, but not good
enough to reach Hawaii. Given the distances between islands, pigs must
have been transported and are thus excellent proxies of human
movement. In this case, they have helped us open a new window into the
history of human colonization of the Pacific.

Public release date: 12-Mar-2007

Contact: Durham University Media Relations
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Durham University
Pig study forces rethink of Pacific colonisation

A survey of wild and domestic pigs has caused archaeologists to
reconsider both the origins of the first Pacific colonists and the
migration routes humans travelled to reach the remote Pacific.

Scientists from Durham University and the University of Oxford,
studying DNA and tooth shape in modern and ancient pigs, have revealed
that, in direct contradiction to longstanding ideas, ancient human
colonists may have originated in Vietnam and travelled between
numerous islands before first reaching New Guinea, and later landing
on Hawaii and French Polynesia.

Using mitochondrial DNA obtained from modern and ancient pigs across
East Asia and the Pacific, the researchers demonstrated that a single
genetic heritage is shared by modern Vietnamese wild boar, modern
feral pigs on the islands of Sumatra, Java, and New Guinea, ancient
Lapita pigs in Near Oceania, and modern and ancient domestic pigs on
several Pacific Islands.

The study results, published today in the prestigious academic journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, contradict
established models of human migration which assert that the ancestors
of Pacific islanders originated in Taiwan or Island Southeast Asia,
and travelled along routes that pass through the Philippines as they
dispersed into the remote Pacific.

The research was funded by funded by the Wellcome Trust, the
Leverhulme Trust, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Fyssen
Foundation.

Research project director, Dr Keith Dobney, a Wellcome Trust senior
research fellow with the Department of Archaeology at Durham
University, said: "Many archaeologists have assumed that the combined
package of domestic animals and cultural artefacts associated with the
first Pacific colonizers originated in the same place and was then
transported with people as a single unit.

"Our study shows that this assumption may be too simplistic, and that
different elements of the package, including pigs, probably took
different routes through Island South East Asia, before being
transported into the Pacific.'

Archaeological evidence suggests that early farmers moved from
mainland East Asia through Island Southeast Asia and on into Oceania,
bringing their domestic plants, animals and specific pottery styles
with them. Other sources of evidence, including human genetic and
linguistic data, appear to support the traditional model that Pacific
colonists first began their journey in Taiwan.

Greger Larson, lead author of the paper, performed the genetic work
while at the University of Oxford. He is now due to join Durham
University in August as a Research Councils UK Research Fellow.

He said: "Pigs are good swimmers, but not good enough to reach Hawaii.
Given the distances between islands, pigs must have been transported
and are thus excellent proxies of human movement. In this case, they
have helped us open a new window into the history of human
colonization of the Pacific.

"We are confident that this research will inspire geneticists and
archaeologists to consider both alternative colonization routes, and
more complex, and perhaps more accurate, theories about the nature of
human colonization and the animals they carried with them."

The specimens used in these analyses came from the jaw bones or teeth
of museum and archaeological specimens and the hair from more recent
specimens.