Page 38 - THE MELANESIA DIASPORA FILE CETAK ISI 10022017

height which did not exceed 150 cm. The communities of Negrito who still are found
are the Aetan in the Phillipines, the inhabitants of Andaman islands, and the Semang in
Malaysia (Brandt, 1965).

Early Modern Humans: The Melanesians’ Distant Ancestors
To further understand the Melanesian population, we need to go back to the oldest Homo
sapiens in Nusantara, their distant ancestors. Since their arrival in Nusantara, the people
who are already like us bred from one generation to another till the end of Pleistocene and
continued to the beginning of Holocene in the population which was considered as the
Australomelanesid race. This race kept growing till inherited the population groups which
one of them was the sub-race known as the Melanesia population right now. The origin of
Early Modern Humans (EMH) was claimed to be from Africa. Their arrival according to the
experts was the third migration (Out of Africa 3) after the first migration of Homo erectus
which reached Indonesia in more than 1.5 ma and the second migration of Homo erectus
which brought along the Acheulean culture reaching Indonesia and China around 0.8 ma
(Foley and Lahr, 1997, Simanjuntak et al., 2010, Simanjuntak, 2013).

Early Modern Humans (EMH)
When EMH went out of Africa to Europe and Asia is still being debated. It has been suggested
that the migration took place around 100,000 years ago. These migrants developed and
changed the local archaic population in the new places (Cann et al., 1987). One of the
branches of migration went to Indonesia then spread out further to West Melanesia and
Australia. These first migrants were the ancestors of the indigenous population who now
inhabit the region. Newer genetic research tends to show newer dates on the migration
from Africa, even filled with the opinions on a single migration (single dispersal model)
or more (multiple dispersal model). To the supporters of a multiple model (Rasmussen et
al., 2011), there were at least two waves of migration. The first wave took place around
62,000-75,000 years ago towards the east up to Indonesia and then Australia. The second
wave was around 25,000-38,000 years ago to Europe and Asia, then over to America.
In the other camp, the supporters of a single migration see migration from Africa as
an event when EMH dispersed to Europe and Asia and finally reached West Melanesia and
Australia through Indonesia (HUGO Pan-Asian SNP Consortium, 2009). On this path to
the east, when they were still in Asia, there was a branch going to East Asia. The genetic
evidence showed >90% of East Asian genetic signs (haplotypes) are found in the Southeast

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