About Ancestors

ABSTRACT

Though regularly studied as different academic domains, Asian and Oceanian studies are deeply intertwined not only through longstanding political, economic, immigrant – and colonial – ties, but by questions about common ancestry. From popular commercial DNA testing to historical studies in linguistics, folklore, archaeology, biological anthropology, and sophisticated genome sequencing, deep histories of Oceanian Islander peoples have long been tied to ‘origin’ traditions and reconstructions of lineages from the Asian mainland, notably through the Austronesian diaspora. From 19th-century linguistic theories and Lapita sites, to 20th-century ABO blood groupings and contemporary mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA assays, scholars have proposed at times conflicting interpretations of Oceania’s possible Asian human heritage. These analyses have themselves been consistently challenged by Indigenous genealogical traditions such as Māori whakapapa and Islander assertions of origins based on ancestral and localized narratives decolonized of Western scientific practices.

Key words:

• Ancestor
• genealogy
• origins
• DNA
• Austronesian

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Lisa Matisoo-Smith, Paul D’Arcy, Warwick Anderson, the anonymous peer-reviewers, and the editorial staff of the JPH for their guidance and direction.

Notes

1 Made in Taiwan: Nathan and Oscar’s Excellent Adventure, directed by Dan Salmon (George Andrews Productions, Auckland, 2006).

2 Grand Prix du Jury and Prix du Public at the 2007 Festival international du film documentaire océanien (or FIFO).

3 Rimuu Williams, ‘Pacific Islander Ancestry DNA Results from a Palauan’ (YouTube video), 8 May 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnHAYx5XOFo (accessed 12 Feb. 2021).

4 J. Smooove, ‘Ancestry DNA – I’m What!?!?!?!?’ (YouTube video), 6 Oct. 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIhBHp9uGnk (accessed 12 Feb. 2021).

5 E. Matisoo-Smith and J.H. Robins, ‘Origins and Dispersals of Pacific Peoples: Evidence from mtDNA Phylogenies of the Pacific Rat’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 101, no. 24 (2004): 9167.

6 E. Hagelberg et al., ‘Molecular Genetic Evidence for the Human Settlement of the Pacific: Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA, Y Chromosome and HLA Markers’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series B: Biological Sciences 354, no. 1379 (1999): 141.

7 Murray P. Cox, ‘Indonesian Mitochondrial DNA and Its Opposition to a Pleistocene Era Origin of Proto-Polynesians in Island Southeast Asia’, Human Biology 77, no. 2 (2005): 186.

8 Peter Bellwood, James J. Fox, and Darrell Tryon, ‘The Austronesians in History: Common Origins and Diverse Transformations’, in The Austronesians: Historical and Comparative Perspectives, ed. Peter Bellwood, James J. Fox, and Darrell Tryon (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2006), 1–13.

9 Sir Peter Buck (Te Rangi Hiroa), Vikings of the Sunrise (Christchurch: Whitcomb and Tombs, 1964), 47–51.

10 Patrick Vinton Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: An Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 25.

11 Ibid., 20–1.

12 Bronwen Douglas, Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511–1850 (New York: Palgrave, 2014), 52–63.

13 Abraham Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origin and Migrations (London: Trubner & Co., 1885), 35.

14 Kirch, On the Road of the Winds, 21.

15 S. Percy Smith, Hawaiki: The Original Home of the Maori: With a Sketch of Polynesian History (Christchurch: Whitcomb and Tombs, 1904), 65.

16 Ibid., 21–2.

17 Horatio Hale, The Origin of Languages and the Antiquity of Speaking Man (Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, 1886). See also, Smith, Hawaiki, 21–2. Also on pan-Polynesian genealogical identity, and the particularity of sacred families, see Niel Gunson, ‘Great Families of Polynesia: Inter-Island Links and Marriage Patterns’, Journal of Pacific History 32, no. 2 (1997): 139–52.

18 See, this issue, Paul D’Arcy, ‘The Philippines as a Pacific Nation: A Brief History of Interaction between Filipinos and Pacific Islanders’; Judith A. Bennett, ‘Fluid Frontiers and Uncertain Geographies: US Controls on Immigration from the Pacific, c. 1880–1950’; Lewis Mayo, ‘Outermost Oceania? Taiwan and the Modalities of Pacific History’.

19 Damon Salesa, ‘Samoa’s Half-Castes and Some Frontiers of Comparison’, in Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History, ed. Ann Laura Stoler (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 83. See also, David Chang, The World and All the Things upon It: Native Hawaiian Geographies of Exploration (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016), 1–15.

20 Donald Evans, ‘Whakapapa, Genealogy, and Genetics’, Bioethics 24, no. 4 (2012): 182–90. On ‘Māori group subjects’, see M. Benton et al., ‘Complete Mitochondrial Genome Sequencing Reveals Novel Haplotypes in a Polynesian Population’, PLoS One 7, no. 4 (2012): e35026.

21 Haunani-Kay Trask, interview by Man Chui Leung, Vancouver Writers Festival, Nov. 1996, https://web.archive.org/web/20030118040345/http://mypage.direct.ca/e/epang/InterviewHaunani.html (accessed 23 Feb. 2021).

22 Ibid.

23 Michel Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 140.

24 Matt Matsuda, ‘Genetic Drift: Pacific Pasts and Futures’, in Pacific Futures: Past and Present, ed. Warwick Anderson, Miranda Johnson, and Barbara Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2018), 49–68.

25 Murray P. Cox, ‘Southeast Asian Islands and Oceania: Human Genetics’, in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration, ed. Immanuel Ness (Hoboken, NJ: Blackwell Publishing, 2013), 2, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444351071.wbeghm837 (accessed 9 Feb. 2021).

26 Ibid., 2; Kirch, On the Road of the Winds, 21.

27 Warwick Anderson, The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into Whitemen (Baltimore: JHU Press, 2008).

28 R.T. Simmons et al., ‘Blood Group Genetic Variations in Natives of the Caroline Islands and in Other Parts of Micronesia’, Oceania 36, no. 2 (1965): 132–70.

29 Ibid., 135–6.

30 Ibid., 146. At this time (1965), the state of the discipline for gene frequency assessment was blood typing. In Micronesia, international interest was initially by Takasaki and Misaitsu from Japan, as summarized by T. Furuhata, ‘The Blood Group Distribution of the Ainu, Formosan Aborigines, and Inhabitants of Micronesian Islands’, Japan Medical World 8, no. 12 (1928), cited in William C. Boyd, ‘Blood Groups’, Tabulae Biologica 17 (1939): 229.

31 Simmons et al., ‘Blood Group Genetic Variations’, 152.

32 Ibid.

33 Kirch, On the Road of the Winds, 23.

34 Stuart Bedford et al., ‘Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence’, in Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence, ed. Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs (Canberra: ANU Press, 2019), 6; Geoffrey R. Clark and Olaf Winter, ‘The Ceramic Trail: Evaluating the Marianas and Lapita West Pacific Connection’, in Debating Lapita: Distribution, Chronology, Society and Subsistence, ed. Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs (Canberra: ANU Press, 2019), 49.

35 Kirch, On the Road of the Winds, 27.

36 Ben Marwick, ‘Change or Decay? An Interpretation of Late Holocene Archaeological Evidence from the Hamersley Plateau, Western Australia’, Archaeology in Oceania 44, Supplement: Pilbara Archaeology (2009): 20.

37 Mickaelle-Hinanui Cauchois, Mark Dugay-Grist, and Herman Mandui, ‘Last Words’, in Archaeology of Oceania: Australia and the Pacific Islands, ed. Ian Lilley (Carlton: Blackwell, 2008), 365.

38 Cox, ‘Southeast Asian Islands and Oceania’, 1. See also, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).

39 Cox, ‘Southeast Asian Islands and Oceania’, 1–2.

40 Peter Bellwood, ‘The Northern Spice Islands in Prehistory, from 40,000 Years Ago to the Recent Past’, in The Spice Islands in Prehistory: Archaeology in the Northern Moluccas, Indonesia, ed. Peter Bellwood (Canberra: ANU Press 2019), 211–21.

41 Meryanne K. Tumonggor et al., ‘The Indonesian Archipelago: An Ancient Genetic Highway Linking Asia and the Pacific’, Journal of Human Genetics 58, no. 3 (2013): 165–6.

42 Ibid., 170–1. See also, J. Stephen Lansing et al., ‘An Ongoing Austronesian Expansion in Island Southeast Asia’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 30, no. 3 (2011): 262–72.

43 University of Leeds, ‘Genetic Study Uncovers New Path to Polynesia’, Science Daily, 7 Feb. 2011, www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/02/110203124726.htm (accessed 9 Feb. 2021); Martin Richards et al., ‘Ancient Voyaging and Polynesian Origins’, The American Journal of Human Genetics 88, no. 2 (2011): 239–47.

44 E. Hagelberg et al., ‘Molecular Genetic Evidence for the Human Settlement of the Pacific: Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA, Y Chromosome and HLA Markers’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 354, no. 1379 (1999): 141–52.

45 M.E. Hurles et al., ‘Y Chromosomal Evidence for the Origins of Oceanic-Speaking Peoples’, Genetics 160, no. 1 (2002): 289–303.

46 M. Kayser et al., ‘Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians: mtDNA and Y Chromosome Gradients across the Pacific’, Molecular Biology and Evolution 23, no. 11 (2006): 2234–44.

47 Tumonggor et al., ‘The Indonesian Archipelago’, 170.

48 Ibid., 169.

49 See Murray P. Cox et al., ‘Autosomal and X-Linked Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Reveal a Steep Asian-Melanesian Ancestry Cline in Eastern Indonesia and a Sex Bias in Admixture Rates’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277, no. 1687 (2010): 1589–96.

50 Meryanne K. Tumonggor, ‘Genetic Insights on the Human Colonization of Indonesia’ (PhD thesis, University of Arizona, 2014), 8, 22.

51 Aroha Te Pareake Mead, ‘The Polynesian Excellence Gene & Patent Bottom-Trawling’, in Pacific Genes & Life Patents: Pacific Indigenous Experiences & Analysis of the Commodification & Ownership of Life, ed. Aroha Te Pareake Mead and Steven Ratuva (Wellington: Call of the Earth Llamado de la Tierra and the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies, 2007), 52.

52 Kayser et al., ‘Melanesian and Asian Origins of Polynesians’, 2234.

53 Hirofumi Matsumura et al., ‘Cranio-Morphometric and aDNA Corroboration of the Austronesian Dispersal Model in Ancient Island Southeast Asia: Support from Gua Harimau, Indonesia’, PLoS One 13, no. 6 (2018): e0198689.