Three Phases of Ancient Migration Shaped the Ancestry of Human Populations in Vanuatu.

ABSTRACT: The archipelago of Vanuatu has been at the crossroads of human population movements in the Pacific for the past three millennia. To help address several open questions regarding the history of these movements, we generated genome-wide data for 11 ancient individuals from the island of Efate dating from its earliest settlement to the recent past, including five associated with the Chief Roi Mata's Domain World Heritage Area, and analyzed them in conjunction with 34 published ancient individuals from Vanuatu and elsewhere in Oceania, as well as present-day populations. Our results outline three distinct periods of population transformations. First, the four earliest individuals, from the Lapita-period site of Teouma, are concordant with eight previously described Lapita-associated individual

SUBMITTER: Lipson M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7755836 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature