Gut Bacteria, Language Analysis Solve Pacific Migration Mystery - Wired Science

2013/10/30 12:33

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Gut Bacteria, Language Analysis Solve

Pacific Migration Mystery
By Brandon Keim
01.22.09
12:52 PM
Follow @9brandon

By tracking the evolution of language and gut bacteria, scientists may have settled a debate over
the spread of humans across the Pacific.
The evolutionary trajectory implied by words and bugs begins with an initial migration from
Taiwan 5,000 years ago, with a first wave of people spreading to the Philippines and a second to
western Polynesia.
The findings, writes University of Cambridge archaeologist Colin Renfrew, "mark a substantial
advance in our understanding of human population history" and they involve some cuttingedge archaeological sleuthing to boot.
Physical remains, rather than linguistic patterns and microbes, are the preferred form of evidence
for human migratory maps. Population genetics has also proved useful, with the progressive
differences between modern and ancient DNA samples forming a biological tapestry of human
history. But archaeologists attempting to understand the settlement of far-flung Pacific islands
have been stymied by a lack of hard evidence, and genetic studies have proven inconclusive.
As a result, some historians concluded that settlement occurred gradually, over the last 30,000
years, by descendants of an initial population from inland southeast Asia the so-called "slow
boat from Wallacea" theory. Others hypothesized a recent, Taiwan-based origin.
In the latest analyses, published Thursday in Science, researchers abandoned traditional tools in
favor of languages and Heliobacter pylori, a microbe that has co-evolved with humans for at least
50,000 years.
Bacterial samples taken from modern aborigines in Taiwan, Australia, Melanesia, Polynesia and
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New Guinea reveal a common, 5,000-year-old Taiwanese ancestor, which varied as human
populations took their stomach bugs to the Philippines 3,000 years ago and then, several
hundred years after that, to Western Polynesia and New Zealand.
A separate analysis of of 210 core vocabulary words in 400 Pacific-region languages produced an
evolutionary tree of culture rather than organisms and its branches followed with the
migratory routes suggested by H. pyloris locale-specific evolution.
"The use of modern genetic data to reconstruct phylogenetic trees shows that the past is still
within us today," wrote Renfrew in a review of the studies. "Our past is within us in a different
sense when the vocabularies of specific modern languages are the basis for historical analysis.
And the past is within us in a very literal way when the early history of humankind is
reconstructed based on the bacterial flora in our guts."
Citations: "Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement."
By R. D. Gray, J. Drummond and S. J. Greenhill. Science, Vol. 323 Iss. 5913, Jan. 22, 2009.
"The Peopling of the Pacific from a Bacterial Perspective." By Yoshan Moodley, Bodo Linz,
Yoshio Yamaoka, Helen M. Windsor, Sebastien Breurec, Jeng-Yih Wu, Ayas Maady, Steffie
Bernhft, Jean-Michel Thiberge, Suparat Phuanukoonnon, Gangolf Jobb, Peter Siba, David Y.
Graham, Barry J. Marshall, Mark Achtman. Science, Vol. 323 Iss. 5913, Jan. 22, 2009.
"Where Bacteria and Languages Concur." By Colin Renfrew. Science, Vol. 323 Iss. 5913, Jan.
22, 2009.
Images: 1. Flickr/SF Brit. 2. AAAS/Science. On top: Distribution of H. pylori populations in
Asia and the Pacific, color-coded by type. Below: The different Austronesian languages,
correlated with the H. pylori status of their speakers.
See Also:
Researchers Synthesize Evolution of Language
Evolution of Language Parallels Evolution of Species
If Climate Didnt Doom Neanderthals, Did Humans?
Shrunken Heads Could Tell Political Tale
DNA Could Illuminate Origins of Medieval Manuscripts
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keims Twitter stream and Del.icio.us feed; Wired Science on Facebook.
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Brandon is a Wired Science reporter and freelance journalist. Based in Brooklyn, New York and
sometimes Bangor, Maine, he's fascinated with science, culture, history and nature. (Twitter |
Google+)
Read more by Brandon Keim
Follow @9brandon on Twitter.
Tags: Archaeology
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nike air jordan

2 years ago

LOL! nice use of a rare Arnie quote, voodoowhammy

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Iroabuchi Onwuka

5 years ago

Genetic materials breakdown with time but the traces of DNA can give us insight into the
travelogue of a specie of Gut bacteria. We can map out the genetic history
C/C the genetic relationship between Nigerian Igbos and their Jewish counterparts
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Chockblock

5 years ago

What about south america? Kon-Tiki anybody?

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Albert Nason

5 years ago

Since the scientists are testing the MODERN populations for gut bacteria, I think the evidence
for ancient migrations is very problematical. Just as species of weeds and insects have been
spread worldwide in the "Post-Columbian Exchange" so have germs and bacteria,
sometimes resulting in epidemics but sometimes quietly replacing a native species with a
more aggressive import. On the face of it, the gut bacteria researchers seem to be claiming
that the Australoids came from Taiwan 5000 years ago while the hard evidence of bones and
cultural artifacts indicate they have been in Australia for 30,000 to 40,000 years.
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