Page 120 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

connect Taiwan with Polynesia. The other important transition was the movement towards
Melanesia from East Nusa Tenggara. Other genetic data developed later has been used
to complete the information in order to reconstruct the Indonesian population consisting
of the Austronesian and Papuan-speaking people. Multiple ancestry-informative markers
from chromosomes are now used as a new approach in molecular anthropology. In the
west, we can observe that Aboriginal Taiwan possesses 100% Asian ancestral markers,
which are present in Melanesia but decreased to 20%, while in Polynesia the markers are
at 80%. The autosomal variation from various Asian populations showed that the genetic
decrease was strongly linked to both language and geography. The study also showed
that the majority of the population showed evidence of admixture. This throws light on
the very complex patterns of human movement. The presence of genetic ancestors of Asia
and Papua together in eastern Indonesia also illustrates the impact of the Austronesian
genetic expansion. The sign of movement towards the east from the admixture with
Asian ancestors at 4,000-3,000 years ago was apparently in line with the spread of the
Austronesian language.
The genetic study strongly supports the picture that at around 4,000 years ago people
with Asian ancestors migrated towards the eastern part of Indonesia and then admixed
with the Papuan-speaking people who already inhabited the area. The genetic evidence
is supported by linguistic and archeological studies, and points to the presence of Papuan
people in eastern Indonesia before the arrival of the Austronesians with the dispersal
of Austronesian farmers to eastern Indonesia occurring later. This main gene flow from
the west to the east did not erase the evidence of other small migrations though they
only have had limited impacts generally. The latest genetic evidence demonstrates that
genetic admixture (Austronesian and Papuan) has been going on for thousands of years.
This indisputably leads us to conclude that any claim or perception of genetic discontinuity
or substitutions is patently false and can be ignored.

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