Posted on 07/05/2005 6:34:19 AM PDT by Pharmboy
A genetic study helps confirm the theory that Polynesians, who settled islands across a vast swathe of ocean, started out in Taiwan, researchers reported on Monday.
Mitochondrial DNA, which is passed along virtually unchanged from mothers to their children, provides a kind of genetic clock linking present-day Polynesians to the descendants of aboriginal residents of Taiwan.
Samples taken from nine indigenous Taiwanese tribes -- who are different ethnically and genetically from the now-dominant Han Chinese -- show clear similarities between the Taiwan groups and ethnic Polynesians, Jean Trejaut and Marie Lin of Mackay Memorial Hospital in Taipei and colleagues reported.
Indigenous Taiwanese, Melanesian and Polynesian populations share three specific mutations in their mitochondrial DNA that are not found in mainland east Asian populations, they report in the journal Public Library of Science Biology.
Their findings suggest that Taiwanese aboriginal populations have been genetically isolated from mainland Chinese for between 10,000 and 20,000 years, and that the original Polynesian migrants originated from people identical to the aboriginal Taiwanese.
Earlier studies have looked at the Y chromosome, which men pass along from father to son.
No Y chromosome link has been found between the early residents of the island of Formosa and the Polynesians, which could suggest early Oceanic societies organized around wives and mothers, the researchers, who included a team at Estonian Biocenterin Tartu, Estonia, said.
Alternatively the reason there's a link is the guys stayed home to hang around the Upper Paleolithic equivalent of a coffee house and sent their daughters and and wives overseas to earn hard money.
This custom is still practiced throughout the region.
It readily accounts for the absence of "local" Y-chromosomes.
Writer failed, maybe.
Second explanation, I can't accept. Societies organized around women---ie, matrilineal descent---do not send the women out to work. On the contrary, the women in such societies, particularly those dependent on the sea, stay home and keep things smooth and orderly. The man can't be relied on to mind the home front, they're away for long periods, so society is organized around her house/clan/name. There have been few such societies known in historical times, but most of those had menfolk whose livelihood involved long absences.
Please FREEPMAIL me if you want on, off, or alter the "Gods, Graves, Glyphs" PING list --
Archaeology/Anthropology/Ancient Cultures/Artifacts/Antiquities, etc.
The GGG Digest -- Gods, Graves, Glyphs (alpha order)
"No Y chromosome link has been found between the early residents of the island of Formosa and the Polynesians, which could suggest early Oceanic societies organized around wives and mothers, the researchers, who included a team at Estonian Biocenterin Tartu, Estonia, said."
No, what is says is, mtDNA isn't a reliable way to study anything. But even within that paradigm, what it says is, the men who differentiated the societies were from elsewhere in one or both places.
Potential new cooking trend: Thai-Poly fusion.
Some people in the social sciences want very badly to find evidence of societies dominated by women?
bingo!
Footsteps in time that add 30,000 years to history of America
Times Online UK | 7/4/05 | Lewis Smith
Posted on 07/04/2005 9:59:36 PM PDT by freedom44
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1436650/posts
Did Ancient Polynesians Visit California? Maybe So
SF Gate | 6-20-2005 | Keay Davidson
Posted on 06/20/2005 3:27:04 PM PDT by blam
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1426929/posts
Did ancient Polynesians visit California?
Maybe so. Scholars revive idea using linguistic ties...
San Francisco Chronicle | June 20, 2005 | Keay Davidson
Posted on 06/25/2005 11:35:01 PM PDT by nickcarraway
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1430833/posts
Human beings, whether they follow matrilinealism or paternalism, trade females.
Uh Oh. The Chinese will now demand all of Polynesia as part of One China policy.
Matrilineal societies are not "dominated" by women, they just have a different perspective on relatives and how they're classified.
Not all societies "trade" females. I don't have time to go into it, but for example, in some societies, he goes to live in HER house, and their children's closest male relative isn't him, it's her brother. (And the brother is the "dominant" one. The bridegroom can dominate over at his sister's house.)
It's not easy for us to follow, even in the basics, never mind the particulars. But there are still such societies, in Asia, and up into the 1800's I believe, there were a few in Asia Minor (islands along the coast).
Go to the local library and look for a basic textbook on cultural anthropology. Some of the kinship systems people have used---successfully---can make our eyes crossed, but they exist even today.
I'm certain the reparations junkies will find someone to fasten their hopes on.
Even chimpanzees trade females~!
The native Taiwanese invented the outrigger canoe when they lived in Fukien province, and crossed to Taiwan. They then used the same boat to travel the Pacific, and also all the way to Madagascar, whey they are the highland tribe, the Marina (sp) people. We know the sequence, because the native Taiwanese language can be traced as the root stock language. About 98% of the current residents of Taiwan are Han Chinese, and the Fukien ancestors I think have been wiped out totally by the Han.
If they arrived in Taiwan as early as some say, they wouldn't have needed a canoe. Taiwan was once part of the mainland, when the sea level was lower.
It was all quite recent. We know that because the languages haven't diverged that much.
They got a clock for that too? I hope it's better than the mtDNA "genetic clock" that pinpoints the genetic isolation between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.
Some scholars believe that the early Taiwanese, not much earlier than 4000BC, could have gotten there without getting wet.
Got a source for that? I'm no expert on chimps, but...are you sure you don't mean Muslims or something?
Incidentally, there's a society in Sumatra which is both matrilineal and Muslim.
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