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languages (18 languages) are West Papuan languages found in the Bird’s Head Peninsula.
Additionally, nine Austronesian languages were also found in Halmahera, east Makian, and
Gebe. Groups speaking languages in the two main language families in the North Moluccas
are in a language contact zone and live side by side.
There are two models proposed for the populations in this area. They are the Replacement
model and the Adoption model. The first model assumes a process where Papuan-speaking
populations shift to speaking Austronesian languages and these replace the Papuan languages.
Despite the occurrence of mixed marriages, this model suggests that populations who represent
both groups would still have different genetic backgrounds. Meanwhile, the Adoption model
assumes that the Papuan population adopted Austronesian languages because of cultural
contact, but without inter-marriages. In this model, there would be no meaningful change in
genetic composition of the populations previously settled in north Moluccas. This means no
traces of admixture with Austronesian should be found. In order to test these hypotheses, the
goal is to estimate the total admixture of Asian genes on earlier populations and to investigate
groups with different languages would have different genetics as well.
In order to examine the presence of Austronesian ancestors admixture traces, Wilder et al.
(2011) conducted a genotype analysis using Ancestor Informative Markers (AM, an ancestor
marker is comprised of 27 SNP, 11 on the autosome and 16 on X-chromosome). A total of 340
individuals from eleven ethno-linguistic groups were chosen for this purpose. They included
Papuan-speaking (Galela, Jailolo, Makian, Ternate, Tidore, and Tobelo) and Austronesian-
speaking (Kayoa, Maba, Patani, Sanan, and Sawai) populations. The results show an allele
frequency which confirms the contributions of both fairly strong genetic backgrounds in the
North Moluccas, while the fraction of Asian admixture was 67%. This fraction is seen to be
higher on the X-chromosome loci, indicating a female bias during the admixture process. In
the regional context, this result was similar with other populations that have been analyzed
such as Sumba, Flores, and Alor. The analysis on other genetic markers proposes the presence
of a genetic breakpoint in East Nusa Tenggara, as suggested in Cox et al. (2007) and Karafet
et al. (2010).
Our previous results illustrate the separation of east and west of Asian influence on
the islands of Southeast Asia. The separation, if examined closely, actually follows the
breakpoint, occurring on morphological phenotypes observed by Alfred R. Wallace who
described the phenotypic division as a line which separated the Malays and the Papuans. This
line was then moved eastwards from the geographical border line for fauna and flora. In the
North Moluccas, Wallace saw that individuals inhabiting the area exhibited a combination

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