Abstract
Many details surrounding the origins of the peoples of Oceania remain to be resolved, and as a step towards this we report seven new complete mitochondrial genomes from the Q2a haplogroup, from Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Kiribati. This brings the total to eleven Q2 genomes now available. The Q haplogroup (that includes Q2) is an old and diverse lineage in Near Oceania, and is reasonably common; within our sample set of 430, 97 are of the Q haplogroup. However, only 8 are Q2, and we report 7 here. The tree with all complete Q genomes is proven to be minimal. The dating estimate for the origin of Q2 (around 35 Kya) reinforces the understanding that humans have been in Near Oceania for tens of thousands of years; nevertheless the Polynesian maternal haplogroups remain distinctive. A major focus now, with regard to Polynesian ancestry, is to address the differences and timing of the ‘Melanesian’ contribution to the maternal and paternal lineages as people moved further and further into Remote Oceania. Input from other fields such as anthropology, history and linguistics is required for a better understanding and interpretation of the genetic data.
Highlights
Oceania was historically divided into: Melanesia; Micronesia; and Polynesia
Many aspects of the human settlement of Polynesia have been resolved, more information is still being amassed from a wide range of disciplines including archaeology [1], linguistics [4,5,6] anthropology [7], technology [8] and infectious diseases [9,10] to help decipher the origins of Pacific populations
It is important to establish a better understanding of the genetics of populations in Near Oceania, and as a step towards this we report seven new mitochondrial genomes from the haplogroup Q2a [28]
Summary
Oceania was historically divided into: Melanesia (including Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia, Fiji and Vanuatu); Micronesia (including the Mariana Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Kiribati); and Polynesia (including Tonga, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Hawaii, French Polynesia, New Zealand). For human prehistory, it is more naturally divided into Near and Remote Oceania with the boundaries of Near Oceania encompassing Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and Remote Oceania the other more eastern islands in the Pacific. While we do not attempt to formally evaluate the main models here (but see Hurles et al, 2003 [2]), it is important to be aware that most models have several compon that can be evaluated independently, and by using data from a range of disciplines
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