Abstract
Archaeological evidence suggests that dogs were introduced to the islands of Oceania via Island Southeast Asia around 3,300 years ago, and reached the eastern islands of Polynesia by the fourteenth century AD. This dispersal is intimately tied to human expansion, but the involvement of dogs in Pacific migrations is not well understood. Our analyses of seven new complete ancient mitogenomes and five partial mtDNA sequences from archaeological dog specimens from Mainland and Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific suggests at least three dog dispersal events into the region, in addition to the introduction of dingoes to Australia. We see an early introduction of dogs to Island Southeast Asia, which does not appear to extend into the islands of Oceania. A shared haplogroup identified between Iron Age Taiwanese dogs, terminal-Lapita and post-Lapita dogs suggests that at least one dog lineage was introduced to Near Oceania by or as the result of interactions with Austronesian language speakers associated with the Lapita Cultural Complex. We did not find any evidence that these dogs were successfully transported beyond New Guinea. Finally, we identify a widespread dog clade found across the Pacific, including the islands of Polynesia, which likely suggests a post-Lapita dog introduction from southern Island Southeast Asia.
Highlights
When people spread from west to east across the Pacific Ocean they did not travel alone
Molecular genetic studies using mitochondrial DNA that have investigated the origins and dispersals of dogs throughout the Pacific indicate that the dingo of Australia, New Guinea Singing Dog (NGSD) and ancient Polynesian dogs are all descended from East Asian dogs[8]
All the specimens from which we obtained mitogenome sequences belong to Hg A, with the exception of one specimen from Taiwan which belongs to Hg B and two partial sequences from specimens from the south coast of Papua New Guinea which possess single nucleotide mutations (SNPs) consistent with Hg B (Fig. 1, and see Supplementary Table S1 for haplogroup assignments and archaeological site locations, Supplementary Table S3 for variable positions relating to haplogroup assignment, and Supplementary Table S4 for defining SNPs for Haplogroup B observed in the ancient Papua New Guinea sequences)
Summary
When people spread from west to east across the Pacific Ocean they did not travel alone. Molecular genetic studies using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) that have investigated the origins and dispersals of dogs throughout the Pacific indicate that the dingo of Australia, New Guinea Singing Dog (NGSD) and ancient Polynesian dogs are all descended from East Asian dogs[8] Despite their long association with people, dogs appear relatively late in the archaeological record of Oceania, and the timing of their arrival and dispersal trajectories appear to differ from that of people. Using a 582 base pair (bp) portion of the control region of the mitochondrial genome (mitogenome) from modern dogs, Savolainen and colleagues demonstrated that all dingoes sampled belonged to a lineage known as the A29 haplotype[8] This is one of a number of dog mtDNA lineages that reached ISEA, it was the only one successfully established in Australia. Neither the ancient Polynesian short haplotypes nor the A29 haplotype carried by dingoes were present in modern dogs sampled from Taiwan and the Philippines, suggesting that dogs were not introduced into the Pacific region from or via this northeastern route
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