The genetic origins and impacts of historical Papuan migrations into Wallacea

Gludhug A. Purnomo*, Shimona Kealy, Sue O’Connor, Antoinette Schapper, Ben Shaw, Bastien Llamas, Joao C. Teixeira, Herawati Sudoyo, Raymond Tobler*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to JournalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

The tropical archipelago of Wallacea was first settled by anatomically modern humans (AMH) by 50 thousand years ago (kya), with descendent populations thought to have remained genetically isolated prior to the arrival of Austronesian seafarers around 3.5 kya. Modern Wallaceans exhibit a longitudinal countergradient of Papuan- and Asian-related ancestries widely considered as evidence for mixing between local populations and Austronesian seafarers, though converging multidisciplinary evidence suggests that the Papuan-related component instead comes primarily from back-migrations from New Guinea. Here, we reconstruct Wallacean population genetic history using more than 250 newly reported genomes from 12 Wallacean and three West Papuan populations and confirm that the vast majority of Papuan-related ancestry in Wallacea (~75 to 100%) comes from prehistoric migrations originating in New Guinea and only a minor fraction is attributable to the founding AMH settlers. Mixing between Papuan and local Wallacean lineages appears to have been confined to the western and central parts of the archipelago and likely occurred contemporaneously with the widespread introduction of genes from Austronesian seafarers—which now comprise between ~40 and 85% of modern Wallacean ancestry—though dating historical admixture events remains challenging due to mixing continuing into the Historical Period. In conjunction with archaeological and linguistic records, our findings point to a dynamic Wallacean population history that was profoundly reshaped by the spread of Papuan genes, languages, and culture in the past 3,500 y.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere2412355121
Pages (from-to)1-10
Number of pages10
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume121
Issue number52
Early online date17 Dec 2024
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 24 Dec 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 the Author(s).

Keywords

  • human migration
  • population genomics
  • Wallacea
  • West Papua

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