Philippine ethnic group has most Denisovan DNA
There&#x27;s an interesting connection to Taiwan, which also ties into early migration to more distant parts of Southeast Asia and Australia:<p><i>Our current understanding is that after humans migrated out of Africa, they flowed down through South East Asia, hopping across narrow straights and between islands. From Timor, they used rudimentary rafts or dugout canoes to cross to Papua New Guinea, then headed down the scythed curve of the Bismarck Archipelago, and reached the far edge of the Solomon Islands by around 40,000 years ago. There, nothing but the open ocean lay ahead of them, and so these people – the Near Oceanians – stopped, and Remote Oceania remained uninhabited.<p>Then some 5,000 years ago, a group of humans from what is now Taiwan left their home shores and journeyed south through the Philippines and Indonesia into Near Oceania. Called Austronesians, they brought with them sophisticated maritime technology and seafaring skills. They mixed with populations of the Near Oceanians, forging a new people – the Lapita – who then struck out to populate the rest of the Pacific. ...<p>“Our analyses suggest that humans left Taiwan more than 5,000 years ago, and that admixture between the Austronesian incomers and the populations of Near Oceania started only 2,000 years later,” Patin says. “The expansions from Taiwan therefore took some time, and may have involved a maturation phase in the Philippines or Indonesia.”</i><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cosmosmagazine.com&#x2F;history&#x2F;palaeontology&#x2F;denisovan-dna-may-have-aided-pacific-migration&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;cosmosmagazine.com&#x2F;history&#x2F;palaeontology&#x2F;denisovan-d...</a>