Ancient eastward migration traced in genes

From "Eurasian Bookshelf" on Facebook -  

https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1202752154987561&set=a.527495192513264: A Story Written in DNA

The Development of the East Eurasian Phenotype

The East Eurasian phenotype — the set of physical traits common among many East Asian, Siberian, and some Southeast Asian populations — didn’t appear overnight. It developed over tens of thousands of years as ancient human populations adapted to diverse climates, diets, and environments across the vast lands east of the Eurasian Steppe.

Modern genetic studies suggest that many distinctive traits — including epicanthic folds, shovel-shaped incisors, thicker hair shafts, and skin tone variations — evolved as adaptive responses to cold climates, UV radiation, and dietary factors during the Upper Paleolithic (roughly 40,000–10,000 years ago).

These traits are believed to have crystallized among ancient hunter-gatherer populations in northern and eastern Asia, particularly in regions like Siberia, the Yellow River basin, and the Amur River valley. Later migrations spread this phenotype widely — into China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia — blending with local groups over millennia.

Genetics also shows fascinating connections between East Eurasians and Native Americans, who migrated across Beringia during the Ice Age, carrying parts of this shared ancestry into the New World.

This story is still unfolding, thanks to ancient DNA research — revealing how migration, climate, and time have shaped the diversity of human appearance across continents.

NEWS: Pacific weather weirding and geopolitical manoeuvering

Papua continues to suffer from the worst drought since the late 1990s; so do Micronesia and the Marshall Islands; a number of Pacific nations have declared a state of emergency.

As the United Nations' OCHA explains, this is related to an El Niño event in the eastern Pacific - warming of surface ocean waters leading to changes in weather patterns across the world. While some areas become drier, others will experience higher rainfall leading to flooding and higher sea levels, the latter especially trying for low-lying islands.

But is it proof of "global warming"?

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has historic data of ocean temperature variations in the El Niño-prone region going back to 1950 (1). The 3-month period from last December to February 2016 saw the highest positive variation from mean, ever (2.2 degrees C).

However, sceptics could say (a) there are always difficulties with methodology in measurements like these and (b) 65 years is not long in geological terms.

It also depends on how you sample and present the information. Typically, the highest average surface ocean temperatures are found in the September-November period:

The pattern is similar to that in the first graph, but what happens if we start looking at years, rather than rolling quarter-years?

This year still looks exceptionally warm. Yet take 5-year averages and the picture changes significantly:

On that basis the current El Niño is merely returning us to the average point. And look at the pattern for rolling 10-year averages:

Taken as a whole, the last decade has actually been cooler! In fact, since the decade 1992-2001 the rolling 10-yearly averages have all been on or below the mean. If reversion to the mean is to be expected, we should be anticipating some more years of above-average temperatures as a correction.

This doesn't at all help the nations now in crisis; but help is coming, and as ever it has political implications. In a Radio New Zealand interview on Friday, Mark Adams of the International Organization for Migration stressed the logistical difficulties of assistance from the Philippines and the USA's west coast; yet a couple of weeks ago the Federated States of Micronesia issued a press release reporting a visit by the Chinese Ambassador, who announced a "10 million RMB worth of equipment specifically to address and mitigate the effects of the drought."

It has been said that the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is a combination of elements representing "danger" and "opportunity". Even if its meaning is more correctly explained as "critical point," the notion may have relevance for Western geopolitical analysts looking at the Pacific region.
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(1) http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml

VANUATU: Trouble in Babel

Map: Google

"Florence Lengkon led a march through town and up to Parliament in which nearly a thousand people demonstrated their desire to see an end to violence against women," reported the Vanuatu Daily Post yesterday.

The trigger for this was an abduction and beating Lengkon received at the hands of bus and taxi drivers nearly a fortnight ago, following critical remarks she had posted on a community page on Facebook. She had called them arrogant and unprofessional for the way they had squabbled among themselves when trying to get business from visiting tourists (and for stoning a tour bus). Lengkon herself runs a helicopter business in Port Vila.

There are many facets to this story: risks in social media discussions, attitudes to women, the poverty that tempts men to misbehave when the chance to make some money presents itself, the great disparity between them and rich Westerners passing by in their floating castle, tourism itself in the form of a brief condescending gawp at other cultures, the question of how small Pacific nations should develop and sustain themselves, what will happen to them if there is a long global recession, etc.

For those who aren't involved, one aspect of the story that pops out is the fact that Lengkon's comments were written in Bislama, one of the three official languages of the Republic.

Bislama is a kind of pidgin English widely used there because the country has over 100 different languages and dialects: "Vanuatu is considered to be the country with the highest density of languages per capita in the world, with an average of about 2,000 speakers for each indigenous language; only Papua New Guinea comes close," says Wikipedia.

There is probably a connection to PNG: Vanuatu may have been colonised by Autronesian speakers as early as 4,000 - 6,000 years ago in the eastward expansion from what is now Papua, which itself saw the arrival of humans some 60,000 years ago, together with other movement into Australia.

Many languages of small communities are considered "endangered" - there was a UNESCO conference about this in 2008. But perhaps preserving them is a futile, Canute-like attempt.

Not to worry; in the far future, when our current energy-rich civilisations are forgotten, there will be isolation and cultural-linguistic variation again, just as island wildlife mutates to take advantage of local niche opportunities.

ORIGINS: Early Australians and Papuans - split or blend?

Here's one theory:

Mapping dispersion of early humans using mitochondrial DNA
"Regions coloured according to the gene pool: Australian lineages in yellow, Melanesians in pink and Filipinos in green."

by Mauricio Lucioni Maristany, in Peru (21 January 2012)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dispersi%C3%B3n_del_haplogrupo_P_(ADNmt).PNG

At this time during the last ice age, Australia and Papua were one landmass. The migration coincided with the start of a wet period that saw central Australia much wetter and greener.

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But looking at P3 and P4, there is another:

 "Modern human migrations in insular Asia according to mitochondrial DNA and non-recombining Y chromosome"

by J. Trejaut, J.-C. Yen, J.-H. Loo, M. Lin

Article

first published online: 20 OCT 2011 at 

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-2824.2011.01516.x/full

According to this article, Papua and Australia were reached by different routes some 51,000 years ago and much later there was some limited genetic exchange between NE Australia and eastern Papua.

When the seas rose again, the land masses separated and so did the subsequent migration histories.

PAPUA NEW GUINEA / AUSTRONESIA / MAP: Papuans and Austronesians: the legacy in languages

Papuan (red) and Austronesian (tan) languages distribution
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papuan_languages#/media/File:Area_of_Papuan_languages.svg
Author: By Kwamikagami at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5855201