Page 114 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

of a Helycobacter pylory study, a type of microbe living in human gastrointestinal tract
(Moodley et al., 2009).
The latest finding showing that the New Guinea and Bougainville Islands populations
received 4-6% genetic material from Denisovan, a hominin co-inhabiting the Europe with
modern human around 30,000 years ago (Reich et al., 2010), provided additional proof
about the number of migration waves to Southeast Asia. Denisovan genetic material is
easy to identify because it is very different from modern human. Reich et al. (2011) then
added 33 populations from Asia and Oceania because the earlier research used a limited
number of population samples. The additional populations include Australian Aboriginal,
near Oceanic, Polynesian, Fiji, eastern Indonesian and Mamanwa a Negrito group from the
Philippines. All had Denisovan genetic material.
However, the finding is different in East Asia, and western Indonesia. The Jehai
people (Negrito from Malaysia) and Onge (Negrito from Andaman island) did not have
Denisovan DNA. It was concluded that the geneflow of Denisovan genes occurred in the
main ancestor of the New Guinea people, Australian Aboriginal, and Mamanwa but did not
appear in the Jehai and Onge populations. This means that East Asia populations could
not have been present in Southeast Asia at the time the geneflow occurred. This suggests
that the multiple wave settlement theory is correct. The first wave contributed to the
ancestor of the Negrito population in Malaysia as well as the Philippines, New Guineas,
and Aboriginal Australia, while the second wave contributed to the ancestor of the East
Asian and Indonesian populations. Data obtained from this study supported previous
findings and is consistent with the single distribution Out of Africa theory via the southern
route followed its spreading to East Asia and South Asia.

The Mapping of Melanesia in the Indonesian Archipelago
After observing the population structure and human migration history in Indonesia
and Melanesia in its regional context, we can now map the position of Melanesia in the
archipelago. If we refer to the initial definition that Melanesia is a geographical area
inhabited by “dark skinned people” with “curly hair” the area would include Papua, the
Moluccas, North Moluccas, and part of East Nusa Tenggara. Many extensive genetic
studies in these areas showed the presence of genetic admixture, which indicates that
Melanesia is not a single genetic entity.
For example, East Nusa Tenggara is known to have very high language variation in
comparison with other places in Southeast Asia. On these islands, there are Austronesian-

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