The Pacific region provides unique opportunities to study human evolution including through
analyses of ancient DNA. While some of the earliest studies involving ancient DNA from …

The appearance of people associated with the Lapita culture in the South Pacific around
3,000 years ago marked the beginning of the last major human dispersal to unpopulated …

INTRODUCTION Most studies of human genetic variation have focused on single-nucleotide
variants (SNVs). However, copy-number variants (CNVs) affect more base pairs of DNA …

Background Comparisons of maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and
paternally-inherited non-recombining Y chromosome (NRY) variation have provided …

Although initial studies suggested that Denisovan ancestry was found only in modern
human populations from island Southeast Asia and Oceania, more recent studies have …

This paper reintroduces the concept of mass migration into debates concerning the timing
and nature of New Zealand's settlement by Polynesians. Upward revisions of New Zealand's …

Although mtDNA and the non-recombining Y chromosome (NRY) studies continue to
provide valuable insights into the genetic history of human populations, recent technical …

Humans reached the Mariana Islands in the western Pacific by∼ 3,500 y ago,
contemporaneous with or even earlier than the initial peopling of Polynesia. They crossed …

New Guineans represent one of the oldest locally continuous populations outside Africa,
harboring among the greatest linguistic and genetic diversity on the planet. Archeological …

There are two very different interpretations of the prehistory of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA),
with genetic evidence invoked in support of both. The “out-of-Taiwan” model proposes a …