Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online
Ancient pig remains from the hobbit cave on Flores are helping researchers piece together how humans moved from Southeast Asia to the Pacific thousands of years ago.
Most scientists think humans spread east from Taiwan to the Pacific. But an international team, including Professor Alan Cooper of Australia's University of Adelaide, argues the pattern of humans moving out of Southeast Asia with their animals is more complex.
The researchers report their DNA study of domesticated pigs in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Humans have been domesticating pigs as a source of meat for so long that tracking their movement is a good way to trace human migration routes.Cooper, an expert in ancient DNA, and colleagues analyzed mitochondrial DNA from pigs in a number of Southeast Asian countries. They then compared it with the DNA of pigs that historically populated the Pacific.
Cooper said the oldest pig DNA they studied came from the tooth of a pig found in the hobbit cave on the Indonesian island of Flores, dated to 6000-7000 years old.
Route Pinpointed
Previous studies have found genetic similarities between Southeast Asian pigs and Pacific ones, suggesting the pigs moved from one to the other.
But Cooper said this latest research has identified the exact route they took.
"Pigs which go out across the Pacific and become the Polynesian pig, appear to originate around Laos, Cambodia and southeast China," he said. "We can actually see them coming down the Malaysian peninsula and across the Sunda island chain [Indonesia and New Guinea]."
Cooper said while most scientists think humans spread to the Pacific from Taiwan, this pig DNA evidence suggests they have a more complex origin.
"The trouble is we don't find any pigs from Taiwan going east," he said. "So we've got quite a different route."
