View article

Eastern Indonesia possesses more linguistic diversity than any other region in Southeast Asia, with both Austronesian (AN) languages that are of East Asian origin, as well as non-Austronesian (NAN) languages of likely Melanesian origin. Here, we investigated the genetic history of human populations from seven eastern Indonesian islands, including AN and NAN speakers, as well as the relationship between languages and genes, by means of nonrecombining Y-chromosomal (NRY) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. We found that the eastern Indonesian gene pool consists of East Asian as well as Melanesian components, as might be expected based on linguistic evidence, but also harbors putative indigenous eastern Indonesian signatures that perhaps reflect the initial occupation of the Wallacea by aboriginal hunter-gatherers already in Palaeolithic times. Furthermore, both NRY and mtDNA data …