Scientific article by Nature about Malay people https://www.nature.com/articles/srep14375.pdf
Dissecting the geneticstructure and admixture of fourgeographical Malay populations
Lian Deng1, Boon-Peng Hoh1,2, Dongsheng Lu1, Woei-Yuh Saw3,4, Rick Twee-HeeOng3, Anuradhani Kasturiratne5, H. Janaka de Silva6, Bin Alwi Zilfalil7, Norihiro Kato8,Ananda R. Wickremasinghe5, Yik-Ying Teo3,4,9,10,11 & Shuhua Xu1,12,13
1Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Key Laboratory of Computational Biology, Max Planck Independent ResearchGroup on Population Genomics, CAS-MPG Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB), Shanghai Institutesfor Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China. 2Faculty of Medicine and HealthSciences, UCSI University, Jalan Merana Gading, Taman Connought, 56000, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 3Saw SweeHock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, Singapore. 4Life Sciences Institute, NationalUniversity of Singapore, Singapore. 5Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya,Ragama 11010, Sri Lanka. 6Department of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, University of Kelaniya, Ragama 11010,Sri Lanka. 7Department of Pediatrics, School of Medical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Kelantan 16150,Malaysia. 8Department of Gene Diagnostics and Therapeutics, National Center for Global Health and Medicine,Tokyo 1628655, Japan. 9NUS Graduate School for Integrative Science and Engineering, National University ofSingapore, Singapore. 10Genome Institute of Singapore, Agency for Science, Technology and Research, Singapore.11Department of Statistics and Applied Probability, National University of Singapore, Singapore. 12School of LifeScience and Technology, ShanghaiTec University, Shanghai 200031, China. 13Collaborative Innovation Centerof Genetics and Development, Shanghai 200438, China. Correspondence and requests for materials should beaddressed to S.X. (xushua@picb.ac.cn)
The Malay people are an important ethnic composition in Southeast Asia, but their genetic make-upand population structure remain poorly studied. Here we conducted a genome-wide study of fourgeographical Malay populations: Peninsular Malaysian Malay (PMM), Singaporean Malay (SGM),Indonesian Malay (IDM) and Sri Lankan Malay (SLM). All the four Malay populations showedsubstantial admixture with multiple ancestries. We identified four major ancestral componentsin Malay populations: Austronesian (17%–62%), Proto-Malay (15%–31%), East Asian (4%–16%)and South Asian (3%–34%). Approximately 34% of the genetic makeup of SLM is of South Asianancestry, resulting in its distinct genetic pattern compared with the other three Malay populations.Besides, substantial differentiation was observed between the Malay populations from the northand the south, and between those from the west and the east. In summary, this study revealedthat the genetic identity of the Malays comprises a mixed entity of multiple ancestries representedby Austronesian, Proto-Malay, East Asian and South Asian, with most of the admixture eventsestimated to have occurred 175 to 1,500 years ago, which in turn suggests that geographical isolationand independent admixture have significantly shaped the genetic architectures and the diversity ofthe Malay populations.The Malay people, who generally inhabit the Malay Archipelago, particularly the Peninsular Malaysia, isa group of genetically diverse populations1. As a major ethnic group settling in such a strategic hub inSoutheast Asia, the Malay population may provide evidence for the complex historical background anddemographic information in this region, which has never been fully understood to date.
In Malaysia, the Malays consist of several sub-groups, e.g., Melayu Minang, Melayu Jawa, MelayuBugis and Melayu Kelantan, based on their respective geographical origins. Malay sub-groups have various historical origins and genetic affinities1,2. Both ancient and recent human activities have introducedgene flows from other populations into the Malays3–5. The indigenous groups (Orang Asli) in Malaysia,including Proto-Malay, Senoi and Negrito, interacted with the Malays because their habitats were situated adjacent to one another. The Malays are genetically related to the Orang Asli despite differences intheir physical features5. For example, Negritos have short stature and very dark skin, which are moresimilar to the phenotypes of African Pygmies than to those of other Southeast Asian populations6,7. Inaddition, populations from other regions of Asia, even from other continents, have cultural and geneticinfluences on the Malays to various extents. In particular, Chinese, Indians, Arabians, and Europeanshave substantially influenced the region since ancient times, and have had a more considerable impact inrecent centuries due to the colonization and globalization of the entire human society, thus leading to themosaic genomic pattern in the Malays2,5,8. Besides Malaysia, the Malays are distributed in the surrounding islands, e.g. Peninsular Indo-China, Singapore, Java, and Sri Lanka9. Malay populations share a common origin with other Austronesian populations9. During the 1400s and 1500s, the Malacca Sultanatewas established and subsequently dominated the entire Malay Archipelago, and the Malay language wasestablished as the official language in that region, replacing Sanskrit. The Malays, especially those in thewestern and southern Malaysia, have had frequent interactions with other Austronesian populationsthrough trading or other social activities10. These early contacts did not result in a large-scale of population admixture, but intermarriage did exist. Gradually, the Malays mixed with the local residents in thesurrounding islands, and have developed into various Malay ethnic groups2. These Malay ethnic groupsaffect not only the demography but also the culture, including religions and languages, outside Malaysia.However, the Malay people have been largely under-represented in studies on human genetic diversityand are not on the population list of large-scale international projects, such as the the InternationalHaplotype Map Project11 (HapMap, http://www.hapmap.org), the Human Genome Diversity Project12(HGDP, http://www.hagsc.org/hgdp) and the 1000 Genomes Project13 (http://www.1000genomes.org).Some recent studies on Asian populations have included a few Malay samples from Malaysia, Indonesiaand Singapore8,14,15, but other Malay populations residing outside of Southeast Asia such as those livingin Sri Lanka, have not been well studied.
The present study aimed to investigate the genetic relationship and population structure of the Malaysfrom both Southeast Asia and South Asia to extend our knowledge about population history and thegenetic landscape of human populations in Southeast Asia. Analyses were conducted by using 288,660single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) shared by 133 Malay individuals from Peninsular Malaysia,Singapore and Sri Lanka (abbreviated to PMM, SGM and SLM, respectively), as well as approximately50,000 SNPs shared by 12 Indonesian Malays (IDM) located in Sumatra Island, 30 SGM and 38 PMM(20 Minangkabau, or locally known as Melayu Minang, a sub-tribe of Malay; 18 Kelantan Malay, orlocally known as Melayu Kelantan) from the HUGO PanAsia SNP Consortium (PASNP)8. We also integrated 3,170 individuals from 90 worldwide populations with our data to obtain a higher resolution indeciphering the genetic diversity of the Malay populations. Genetic structure investigation was basedon model-free methods that provided direct information on population relationships and the geneticmakeup. Furthermore, we inferred the population admixture history of each Malay population to illustrate the population genetic structure patterns.
Results
Population genetic relationships. As shown in the population phylogenetic tree (Fig. 1,Supplementary Figure S1), populations from closer geographical areas showed greater genetic similarities and were thus clustered. Among the four Malay groups, SGM, PMM and IDM were closely clusteredand shared a distinct clade with other Southeast Asians, whereas IDM showed a closer relationshipto populations from Sumatra and Java than to other Southeast Asians. On the other hand, SLM waslying on a cline of Southeast Asian and South Asian. Based on the genetic distance measured by FST,SLM showed a closer relationship with South Asian populations (FST= 0.004–0.024) than with SoutheastAsians (FST= 0.010–0.057). In addition, the genetic difference between SLM and the other Sri Lankanethnic groups (FST= 0.007–0.012) was larger than that between any other Sri Lankan ethnic groups(FST= 0.001–0.003).
Similar population relationships were observed by using principal component analysis (PCA). Atthe global scale, the four Malay groups were considerably distinct from Africans, and similar to othernon-Africans (Fig. 2a). South Asians (Indians and Sri Lankans) constituted a bridge between the Europeansand other Asian populations (Fig. 2). SLM, as well as the Uyghurs that have been proven to be an admixedpopulation16, were situated between other Sri Lankan populations and Southeast Asians (Fig. 2). In general, the geographical distribution of these populations was fully reflected by their genetic relationships,although exceptions existed. However, PMM showed closer affinity to the Southeast Asian populationslocated outside Malaysia despite that they inhabited the adjacent regions of Peninsular Malaysia, possibly due to the population isolation and local adaptation of the Orang Asli populations, which in turnresulted from their special living environment and demographic history5 (Fig. 2b). By gradually excluding the populations less closely related to the Malays (Supplementary Figure S2), we finally identifiedthat the western Indonesians had the closest relationship to PMM, SGM and IDM, followed by Filipino, Thai, Proto-Malay and Bidayuh (a native population from southern Sarawak). Furthermore, population differentiation was also observed between Malay populations from the north (SLM and KelantanMalay) and the south (Minangkabau, SGM and IDM) (Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient(PCC)= 0.781 between the PCA coordinates and the geographical latitude, p-value< 2.2× 10−16), andbetween those from the west (SLM) and the east (PMM, SGM and IDM) (PCC= 0.9 between the PCAcoordinates and the geographical longitude, p-value< 2.2× 10−16) (Supplementary Figure S3).
Multiple population admixture in Malays. An unsupervised ADMIXTURE analysis, without priorinformation of individual ancestry, was performed to investigate patterns of admixture in Asia. Nineancestral clades were assumed to reflect the major genetic components in Asia (Fig. 3, SupplementaryFigure S4). Collectively, South Asians and East Asians had their distinct genetic patterns. European,Central Asian and South Asian components predominated the South Asian genomes, whereas a largeproportion of the East Asian component and a small proportion of the Southeast Asian componentcomprised the East Asian genomes. However, the Southeast Asian populations had more complex anddiverse genetic makeup than the South Asians and the East Asians. Malay populations were admixedwith multiple ancestries with no representative component identified in them, but most Malays had agenetic pattern distinct from other Southeast Asian populations.
Malay populations shared four major components, e.g., East Asian, South Asian, Austronesian andaboriginal Southeast Asian. East Asians, which contribute 4%–16% of the Malay genomes, had interactions with Malays at very recent time (100–200 years ago, assuming a single generation time of 25 yearswas applied throughout this study) (Table 1, Supplementary Table S1). We observed a substantial proportion of South Asian ancestry in the Malay populations as well, ranging from 3% to 34%, with the greatestproportion observed in the SLM and the most ancient admixture date in the PMM (625–1,400 yearsago) and IDM (1,350–2,250 years ago). In addition, the proportions of Austronesian admixture (represented by the Taiwanese aborigines; labeled as Southeast Asian 1 in Fig. 3) and aboriginal SoutheastAsian admixture (represented by Proto-Malays; labeled as Southeast Asian 2 in Fig. 3) were within theranges of 15%–31% and 17%–62%, respectively, in the Malay populations, with a greater proportion inPMM, SGM and IDM. We observed nearly constant proportions (<5%) of components from African,European, hunter-gatherer (represented by Malaysian Negrito), and Oceanian (represented by Papuan)in most of the Southeast Asians examined in this study. However, these were disregarded in our interpretation because these could have resulted from the ascertainment bias. The time of admixture wasestimated by using ALDER throughout the present study (see Materials and Methods, baca pdf tuh).
While the genetic makeup of the four Malay populations shared similar ancestral components, theproportion of these components in each population substantially differed. In PMM, SGM, and IDM, theAustronesian and Southeast Asian aboriginal components had larger proportions than the East Asianand South Asian components. Specifically, very little genetic difference was found between PMM andSGM, in which the two major components were of nearly equal proportions and together comprised 60%–70% of the entire genome. IDM also showed a very similar genetic pattern, but was more marginally affected by the Austronesian population (Austronesian component: 62% in IDM, 31%–45% in SGMand PPM). However, the genetic admixture pattern of SLM was unique compared to the other Malaypopulations, exhibiting admixture between South Asians and Malays. The proportions of different components were relatively more comparable in SLM. For instance, the proportions of Central Asian andSouth Asian components in SLM were intermediate between those observed in Southeast Asians andSouth Asians, and a similar pattern was detected for the Southeast Asian component (Austronesians andProto-Malays) and East Asian component.
To quantify the contribution of each ancestral component to the differentiation of Malay populations,we calculated the correlation between the proportions of each ancestral component and the values alongPC1 of the 4 Malay populations in Supplementary Figure S2a. Supplementary Table S2 showed thatall the four major components in the Malays were correlated with PC1 to different extents (p< 0.01).For example, the South Asian component was most highly correlated with the Malay differentiation(PCC= 0.927, p-value< 2.2× 10−16), whereas the East Asian component showed a much less significantcorrelation (PCC= 0.268, p-value= 1.03× 10−4). Furthermore, the European and Central Asian components, although they were not major components in the Malays, also largely contributed to the Malaydifferentiation (PCC= 0.807 and PCC= 0.579, respectively).
Discussion
In this study, we conducted a genome-wide analysis of four geographical Malay populations fromMalaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. We have analyzed the genetic diversity of the Malay populations and revealed substantial population differentiation and gene flow among these different geographical populations.
In general, all the four Malay populations were inferred to be substantially admixed with multipleancestries from East Asian, South Asian, Austronesian, and Southeast Asian aboriginal people around175–1,500 years ago (Fig. 3, Table 1), which could be attributable to their complex origins and frequentinteractions with surrounding ethnic groups, as reported in historical records. As early as 2,000 years ago,several ancient Malay states emerged in the coastal areas of the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, western Javaand western Borneo. During the 7th–13th centuries, the Malay culture reached its golden age, and influenced the entire Malay Archipelago2,17. In the 15th century, the Malacca Sultanate initiated a major revolution in Malay history by promulgating its languages, religions and traditions, which has also recentlyinfluenced the immigrants from other countries2. Since the year 1299, the advent of the Kingdom ofSingapura, a small Malay kingdom, in the modern-day island nation Singapore started the inhabitationof Malays in Singapore18. Although Sri Lanka and Southeast Asian countries have had very early interactions on politics, religion and culture since the 11th century19, the earliest Malay inhabitants of SriLanka were brought in laborers from Indonesia and Malaysia by the Dutch and British colonizers duringthe 16th–17th century20,21. The present-day SLM, which comprise 0.3% of the Sri Lankan population, arethe descendants of the mixture of the local Sri Lankan people with those Malays20. Meanwhile, the firstmillennium of the Common Era also witnessed the trade migration of South Asians into the Malay kingdoms, as well as the arrival of Chinese, Arabian and Persian merchants in Island Southeast Asia2,22. From1500s towards the end of the 20th century, European countries, including Portugal, Netherlands, andBritain, colonized the majority of Southeast and South Asian countries, bringing about mating and geneflow across continents. More recently, due to the development of transportation and the globalization ofthe entire human society, the Southeast and South Asian populations have thus had more frequent geneflow from each other and from their surrounding neighborhoods, e.g., East Asians. Although previousgenetic studies investigated less comprehensive Malay samples covering a smaller geographical range ofMalay, the results indeed concurred with our findings of extensive genetic diversity among the Malays1,8.
The present study provides the first identification of the distinct genetic makeup of SLM comparedto the other three Malay populations. SLM inherited much more South Asian ancestry, whereas PMM,SGM, and IDM are genetically similar to most of the other Southeast Asian populations, with minorfluctuations in the proportions of each genetic component across populations. Two factors have facilitated to shaping SLM to be a genetically intermediate population between South Asians and SoutheastAsians (Figs 1 and 2). First, SLM originated from the admixture of Sri Lankan populations and theMalays. Assuming the Sri Lankan ethnic groups and Malay to be the ancestral populations, we identified55%–61% of Sri Lankan component and 39%–45% of Malay component in SLM (Supplementary TableS3). Second, Sri Lanka is located in the strategic region bridging South Asia and Southeast Asia, and thushas been an important trading center as well as a melting pot of various ethnicities.
Unlike those isolated or ancient populations in Southeast Asia (e.g., Negritos), the Malays do nothave a representative genetic component. Instead, four major ancestral components constitute theMalay genomes, making the Malays distinguishable from most of the other Southeast Asian populations(Fig. 3). The Austronesian and Southeast Asian aborigines have been determined to be the predominantcomponents. As indicated by our results, aboriginal Taiwanese (Ami and Atayal) and Proto-Malays havethe largest proportion of these two components; however, we were not able to determine the origin of thecomponents because these could have been derived from any other source populations that have yet tobe identified by our analyses. The genetic pattern of the Austronesian component across Southeast Asiansfollows the Austronesian migration route supported in the “Out of Taiwan” hypothesis23–25, which influenced the eastern part of Southeast Asian more than the western part of it. However, the Proto-Malaycomponent, which has been reported to be an ancient Southeast Asian component26, is centered in thewest. Considering that the Proto-Malays are an isolated aboriginal population in this region, it is likelythat the Proto-Malay genetic component in other Southeast Asian populations, especially those locatedoutside Peninsular Malaysia, was obtained from the broadly migrated Malay population, which had veryclose interactions with Proto-Malays. This observation also has important implications to the humanmigration history in Southeast Asia. Apart from the four major components, we observed small amountof other components in the Malays. These components were not included in our interpretation becausethey could be resulted from ascertainment bias. In ADMIXTURE analyses, we only used SNPs shared byglobal populations, leading to the reduction of the number of rare SNPs in the SNP panel of each population, thus providing less population-specific information. In this case, some genomic regions couldbe origin-ambiguous and have been assigned to multiple continental populations. The major humanmigration events that occurred in Southeast Asia may have geographical limitations, which means thatdifferent populations obtained the major genetic contributions from their respective close neighbors,thus leading to a correlation between geographical coordinates (both latitude and longitude) and population differentiation. This indicates the effect of geographical independency in human genetics. Even so,we did not rule out other migration events that would have had a smaller genetic impact. These findingsmay provide crucial clues to the peopling in Southeast Asia.
The major limitation of the present study lies in the possible bias of the estimated admixture time andfraction. For some populations, the sample size and SNP density were not highly appropriate for use inthe analyses. On one hand, most of the Southeast Asian genotypes, including IDM, from PASNP8, onlyharbored 50,000 SNPs and comprised less than 20 individuals. On the other hand, we have integrateddata from various international projects and genotyping platforms hence the number of SNPs in thecombined datasets that were then applied to different analyses is very small. In this case, although PCA,genetic component analysis and the construction of population phylogenetic tree are sufficiently robustto fluctuations in sample size or SNP density, the estimation of admixture time and fraction, which werebased on the calculation of linkage disequilibrium (LD) decay, might be highly accurate. Therefore, amore comprehensive collection of larger numbers of samples and SNP markers will be necessary in thefuture studies. Besides, the existing methods for admixture analysis are not powerful enough to handle the various Southeast Asian ethnic groups with complex historical and genetic backgrounds. Thiscan be explained by two factors. First, our estimation was based on the hybrid isolation (HI) model27,which might not be representative of the real cases. Second, the populations referred to as the ancestriesalso recently obtained genetic materials from other populations, which could bias the estimation of theimpact of ancestral populations on their admixed descendants. Therefore, more sophisticated methodsmay better facilitate the construction of human migration history in Southeast Asia.
In summary, the present study provides the first demonstration of the genetic relationship and geneticmakeup of various Malay populations and indicated a complex human population admixture history inSoutheast Asia. We propose that geographical isolation and independent admixture history have significantly shaped the genetic architectures and the diversity of the Malay populations. An important direction for future work is to extend to a wider coverage of Malay groups and increase the SNP density, toallow a more detailed investigation of the population genetic diversity in Southeast Asia.
Direktur Lembaga Biologi Molekuler Eijkman Sangkot Marzuki menjelaskan, dari pemetaan genetika yang dilakukan 99 ahli genetika di Asia, terungkap orang Melayu lebih tua dibandingkan dengan orang China. Khususnya Yunan yang selama ini dianggap sebagai nenek moyang umumnya orang Indonesia.
Ras Austronesia, termasuk orang Melayu, lebih dulu ada dibandingkan dengan ras Chinotis-Belan, yaitu ras yang berbahasa China/Mandarin. Sangkot mengungkapkan hal itu dalam orasi ilmiahnya pada Dialog Budaya Melayu di Pekanbaru, Riau, Selasa (4/12).
Dialog diprakarsai Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan bersama dengan Lembaga Adat Melayu di Riau dan Pemerintah Provinsi Riau. Tampil pula memberikan orasi ilmiah budayawan Melayu, Tengku Nasaruddin Said (Tenas) Effendy. Dialog yang berlangsung tiga hari sejak Senin ini juga diisi berbagai diskusi mengenai perkembangan budaya Melayu di Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunai, Thailand, Singapura, dan Brunei.
Tenas Effendy mengingatkan, sekarang kehidupan budaya Melayu semakin berat karena menghadapi intervensi budaya luar yang belum tentu serasai dan sejalan dengan nilai asas budaya Melayu. Kehidupan masa kini dan masa depan yang semakin terdedah, semakin membuka peluang terjadinya pergeseran, perubahan, dan pengikisan nilai budaya Melayu.
Sangkot, yang menjadi bagan dari ahli getika di Asia Timur menyebutkan, Melayu merupakan ras perpaduan. Ras Melayu secara genetika memiliki ciri adanya hemoglobin Malay yang tak dimiliki ras lain.
Seorang pakar genetik Universiti Oxford, Dr Stephen Oppenheimer berkata beliau terkejut apabila melihat betapa kajian ke atas asal usul warga pribumi di negara ini dijalankan mengikut pertimbangan politik.
Reaksi seperti itu dapat dikesan melalui laporan media ke atas satu persidangan mengenai asal usul orang Melayu minggu lalu, yang mendedahkan bahawa Orang Asli daripada suku Senoi, Semang dan Melayu Proto merupakan "pemegang obor" yang merintis tamadun manusia moden.
Oppenheimer ketika menjelaskan penemuan itu dalam satu wawancara dengan Malaysiakini minggu lalu berkata, Orang Asli khususnya dari suku Semang dan Melayu Proto merupakan keturunan daripada manusia pertama yang menjejakkan kaki ke Asia Tenggara.
Keturunan manusia itu, di kawasan yang dahulunya dikenali sebagai Pentas Sunda ini juga menjadi nenek moyang kepada keturunan mereka di Asia Timur dan juga di benua Amerika, katanya.
Keturunan Semang dan Melayu Proto itu mempunyai ciri khas dan unik, sama seperti keturunan yang tersebar daripada kawasan Pentas Sunda, kata Oppenheimer lagi.
Perkara itu menunjukkan bahawa masyarakat tersebut telah wujud di sini semenjak penduduk awal tiba di kawasan ini, tambahnya.
Beliau menjalankan kajian tersebut ke atas sampel DNA yang diperolehi daripada penduduk serata dunia untuk menentukan asal usul masyarakat dunia – bermula daripada manusia pertama di Afrika sehingga kepada warga Eropah di teluk Arab dan juga tanah warga Asia timur di Pentas Sunda.
Oppenheimer berada di Kuala Lumpur pada Jumaat lalu untuk membentangkan kajiannya di persidangan Asal Usul Melayu: Induknya di Alam Melayu, anjuran Ikatan Ahli Arkeologi Malaysia.
Beliau telah menerbitkan kajiannya sebelum ini melalui buku Eden in the East dan juga Out of Eden yang memperincikan teorinya mengenai migrasi penduduk awal dunia.
Pembentangan kajiannya boleh dilihat di laman yayasan Bradshaw Foundation, satu badan yang bergiat dalam kajian genetik, antropologi dan arkeologi.
Geneticist clarifies role of Proto-Malays in human origin
Aidila Razak
Published: Jan 25, 2012 11:11 AM
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Updated: Jan 31, 2012 1:57 PM
INTERVIEW Leading Oxford University geneticist Dr Stephen Oppenheimer is taken aback by how politically charged the research into the origins of human population is in Malaysia.
Most recently, strong reaction had arisen over media coverage of a conference on the origins of the Malay race, which marked the Orang Asli - the Senoi, Semang and the Proto-Malays - as torchbearers of the modern human race.
Clarifying this finding in an interview last week, Oppenheimer said the Orang Asli, particularly the Semang and the Proto-Malays are direct descendants of the first humans who stepped foot in Southeast Asia (then Sunda), and are “ancestral” for east Asia and the Americas.
“Particularly, the Semang and the Proto-Malay have lineages which are characteristic and very unique to their own populations, which clearly have a local geographic distribution. So they have been here since the original settlers...,” he said.
Sequencing random mutations in mitochondrial DNA, a type of DNA inherited only from mothers, Oppenheimer traces the origins of human population, from the first human in Africa, to the homeland of Europeans in the Arabian gulf and to homeland of east Asians in Sunda.
Oppenheimer was in Kuala Lumpur last Friday to present a paper at the Asal Usul Melayu: Induknya di Alam Melayu conference organised by the Association of Malaysian Archeologists.
He is the author of the books ‘Eden in the East’ and ‘Out of Eden’ which details his theories on human population migration. A graphic presentation of his research can be found here .
Excerpts of the interview follow. The content has been edited for language, brevity and flow.
Malaysiakini: You use your research in mitochondrial DNA to trace the origins of the human population. Your theory is that there was only one single migration out of Africa.
Stephen Oppenheimer : The ancestry of all humans living today is from Africa. From looking at the mitochondrial tree, for the whole human species that is still alive today, you'll find most of the branches and roots are in Africa. When you look at the rest of the world, it belongs to one twig of the African tree.
(In order for this to happen), you will have only one exit. If you had two exits, you would have two twigs, or more twigs out of Africa. We don't. We only see one twig represented outside of Africa, the so-called L3, and its two daughter branches M and N.
In what year was that single migration?
It's possible to date the age of L3. It's 60,000-80,000 or even 60,0000-90,000 years ago, depending on the method that you use. So the exit from Africa is somewhere between 55,000 and 85,000 years ago.
And people are very keen to date exactly when it is. One of the very important date markers which occurred during that time, between 55,000 and 85,000 years ago, was the explosion of the Toba volcano in North Sumatra.
The Toba volcano is 100km long, 30km wide. That's where the Batak live (today). It was the biggest bang in the last 2.5 million years. It affected populations throughout the world. But it particularly affected populations in India.
In the book ‘Out of Eden’, I wrote about this. I suggested that the exit from Africa was before Toba on the basis on genetics. But this is still a controversial area and I think it is an open question still, whether it was before Toba or soon after, but it was somewhere around 70,000 years ago.
Where did this single group of about 250 people, who came out of Africa, go?
The South coast. They went to Djibouti... and then the south Arabian coast to the Gulf, but the Gulf was not there as the sea levels were right down. Then they went to India, Sri Lanka, and from there they went to the Bay of Bengal, and to the Malay peninsula.
Southeast Asia was different then. Instead of islands and a long thin Malay peninsula, it was a block of land... called the Sunda continent or the Sunda Shelf.
People who came out of Africa moved very rapidly towards there and you can tell (this) from the way the (mitochondrial DNA) tree is structured. They did not stay in any one place for a very long time. They moved on. They left colonies all along the route. But the vanguard moved very rapidly over a couple of thousand years, right down to Bali.
The ancestors of the three Orang Asli groups (the Senai, Semang and Proto-Malays) in the Malay peninsula arrived in the vanguard. They descended from the very first people who put foot in this region in Malaya.
The Toba eruption wiped out populations in East India but not in Sunda. What happened to the ones in Africa?
The ones in Africa were fine. The ones who settled in the Arabian gulf region were probably fine, but the east coast of India were severely hit. Because the volcano is in Sumatra and the wind was going northeast. The ash completely showered India.
It's difficult to make these estimates but 10,000 is used a lot (for the number of survivors in Sunda). A small number.
Did floods push migration out of Sunda?
In the last 16,000 years, the ice started melting and it melted very rapidly in three big events. The first one was 14,500 years ago, a really major melt. The second one was 11,500 years ago and the third one 8,500 years ago.
If you look at the genetic record for east Asia, you'll find that for each of these melts, you will see a rapid genetic expansion. It's very tempting to think that the reason they were dispersing was because the sea was moving in.
Comparing the genetic make-up of the Malays today and the Orang Asli, would you say the latter would have a stronger link to the original settlers?
Particularly the Semang and the Proto-Malay have lineages which are characteristic and very unique to their own populations, which clearly have a local geographic distribution. So they have been here since the original settlers...
They've stayed at home on the Malay peninsula. The Malays share some Orang Asli lineages, they have some of their own unique to island Southeast Asia and about half of the Malay mitochondrial lines come from Indonesia.
And that's not a big surprise in itself, because we know even in the last couple of hundred years there have been immigrant populations - the Bugis, the Banja, the Rawa from Sumatera, the Minangkabau from Sumatra and the Jawa from Java. If you look at the genetics of these people they are characteristic of where they come from.
So the interchange between island Southeast Asia and the Malay peninsula is very strong but it is also very old. It has not just occurred during the neolithic (period but) goes back 20,000 years.
One thing for certain is that Southeast Asians are 'ancestral for' the rest of east Asia.
Yes, in a sense I think the other way to put it is that Southeast Asia is the homeland of the dispersal of the people who went north into China and right into the Americas. The Southeast Asians themselves are descendants of the original settlers.
I think that the Orang Asli are slightly different in the sense that they show evidence of being in the same place right from the start. If one is talking about the rest of Southeast Asia, including the Malays, the effect of rising waters which pushed people all around in Indonesia has meant a lot more mixing. It is within Southeast Asia.
If one takes Southeast Asia as a whole, the ancestry of the Malays and Indonesian, are just as old as the Orang Asli. Only the Orang Asli stayed put while the others moved around.
There has been a view which has dominated teaching over the past 20 years that the (original) south-east Asian (settlers) were replaced by rice farmers from Taiwan, 4,000 or so years ago, who sailed to the Philippines and Indonesia and wiped out all indigenous population there.
The evidence for that is very, very poor and the genetic evidence is almost zero. We did look for good evidence of migration from Taiwan towards the Philippines and Indonesia and we found two lineages amounting to 6 percent of the population but the rest had already arrived before the neolithic (period) and not from Taiwan.
They also did not come from China into Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia was the first to be settled. China was colonised from Southeast Asia rather than the other way around.
The title of the conference (last Friday) refers to the ‘origins of the Malays’. Where do they come from?
About half from island Southeast Asia, about the other half mainland Southeast Asia. There are other origins which we are doing research into right now. Ultimately, they came out of Africa and their ancestors arrived here over 60,000 or more years ago.
Basically we're all cousins. The homeland of all humans is Africa, while the homeland of all east Asians and the Americas is Southeast Asia. Where do Europeans come from?
If you ask me, a single place that they come from is the region around the Gulf, Iraq and Iran. It's the eastern part of the Middle East.
The people who went up to the Gulf moved later, only 50,000 years ago. The people who had gone to Sunda left a long time before. The movement to Europe was a delayed branch. People have got to Sunda before the ancestors of the Europeans had even left the Gulf. There were a lot of fresh water lakes, and was probably a very nice place to stay.
How do you view attempts to reconcile the scientific findings with creationism, and attempts to find Adam insofar as human migration is concerned?
In my first book ‘Eden in the East’, which spoke of the Sunda continent and the movement out to the Pacific, I spent the first half looking at what is called folklore, which includes religious stories and how the branches of that folklore have moved in Asia and Eurasia.
There are common features of Southeast Asian folklore, Pacific folklore and Western folklore. Too many coincidences for it to be by chance. For instance, the story of the flood. People have always regarded the story of the flood to be so extraordinary to be not possibly true.
But geologically we know there were these floods. Genetically we know the effect of these floods was to get people running in all directions in their boats... The flood was actually worse in places like the Gulf, which was flat land, and Southeast Asia, again (was then) a very flat continental shelf.
The stories of the flood have families and you can look at these families geographically the same way as you look at distributions of mitochondrial DNA. When you look at these stories, there are some common core stories which appear in many religious texts.
A section of the Old Testament, Genesis, describes the flood and the period after the flood and the separation of population by the names of the descendants of Noah. Those names are still present in the language families in part of the old world.
For instance, the three sons of Noah - Ham, Sham and Japhet. Ham is African and one of his descendants, Kush, is also African and we have the Hamitic and Kushitic languages in Africa...
I don't discount the folklore, religious and non-religious, as a potential source. Not the only source as, if you look at some folklore, it is quite... (chuckles) ...(but) I don't discount that sort of analysis.
So where was Adam? When did the first human live?
If you talk about the source of all humankind, modern humans, it has to be Africa. From the biological definition, paleontologists would say all species which names start of with homo (began) 2.5 million years ago.
For homo sapiens it is probably is about 200,000 years, not very long, and most of that time was in Africa. The homo sapiens in Africa replaced the humans of the previous types and the ones who left Africa replaced all the non-Africans of the previous type.
Homo sapiens are what you are referring to when you talk about modern humans.
That's right. Modern humans is a very closely related family. We tend to exaggerate difference between peoples... because we need to recognise people in order to behave as social animals...
But when you look at it anatomically, the differences between (those living in) different regions of the world is very small, and genetic differences are also very small.
So we are a very closely related family, and that include the Africans.
Wah... Soal marka etnik, cuma ras Melayu yang punya
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA - RasMelayuyang termasuk dalam kelompok austronesia ternyata memiliki keunikan tersendiri. Menurut Direktur Lembaga Eijkman, Profesor Sangkot Marzuki, tes DNA mitokondria menunjukkan ada sifat yang distinctive yang ditemukan dalam rangkaian DNA ras melayu.
Temuan ini didapat melalui penelusuran sifat-sifat genetik yang diturunkan dari ibu. Sedangkan kelompok yang diteliti adalahras MelayuSemenanjung. "Gen spesifik itu ternyata tidak ditemukan pada ratusan orang Jawa," kata Sangkot .
"Rasanya saya belum menemukan marka genetik yang spesifik seperti yang ada pada ras Melayu," kata penemu petagenuntuk penyakit thalassemia ini.
Pada ras Melayu ini, kata Sangkot, mungkin dikatakan menerima pengaruh dari luar rasnya. "Namun, pengaruh itu tidak sampai besar dan dominan, karena marka-nya masih tetap terlihat."
Sangkot mengakui, keberagaman gen di Indonesia ternyata sangat kaya. Namun, pakar genetik ini mengatakan, sifat genetik lebih sensistif secara sosial dari pada bahasa. Maka ia mengingatkan, agar keragaman genetik manusia Indonesia jangan sampai memecah persatuan.
"Jika ada istilah Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, maka dari sudut pandang gen menjadi Genneka Tunggal ika yang artinya meski memiliki keberagaman gen namun tetap satu," katanya. "Kebangsaan itu bukan genetik, tapi cita-cita bersama. Jadi cita-cita bersama itulah yang harus diperkuat lagi."
Post time 10-9-2021 09:23 PM
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