A small cohort of Island Southeast Asian women founded Madagascar

Abstract

The settlement of Madagascar is one of the most unusual, and least understood, episodes in human prehistory. Madagascar was one of the last landmasses to be reached by people, and despite the island's location just off the east coast of Africa, evidence from genetics, language and culture all attests that it was settled jointly by Africans, and more surprisingly, Indonesians. Nevertheless, extremely little is known about the settlement process itself. Here, we report broad geographical screening of Malagasy and Indonesian genetic variation, from which we infer a statistically robust coalescent model of the island's initial settlement. Maximum-likelihood estimates favour a scenario in which Madagascar was settled approximately 1200 years ago by a very small group of women (approx. 30), most of Indonesian descent (approx. 93%). This highly restricted founding population raises the possibility that Madagascar was settled not as a large-scale planned colonization event from Indonesia, but rather through a small, perhaps even unintended, transoceanic crossing.

Determination of population origin: a comparison of autosomal SNPs, Y-chromosomal and mtDNA haplogroups using a Malagasy population as example

“…2,3 The present population, the Malagasy, are considered an admixed population demonstrating morphological and cultural traits of Bantu and Austronesian speakers, which has been confirmed by analysis of Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). [4][5][6][7] The various ethnic groups on Madagascar are generally classified into two main subgroups: the Highlanders (HL), considered being more Asian in culture and phenotype, and the people from the coasts (CT), thought to be more African. 8 The determination of the phenotype, for example, eye colour, hair colour or skin colour, or the population origin from DNA has been an important research field in recent years, in which considerable progress has been accomplished (see for example [9][10][11][12][13][14][15] ).…”

Natural selection for the Duffy-null allele in the recently admixed people of Madagascar

“…Genetic surveys focusing on the uniparentally inherited mitochondria and Y-chromosome have confirmed the dual southeast Asian/African origin of the Malagasy [20][21][22], with admixture proportions estimated to be near equal between the two ancestral groups [22], though with a difference between the more African coastal groups and the more Austronesian Central Highland groups [21,23]. A recent analysis of nuclear genomic SNP data from three southern coastal groups estimated the proportion of African ancestry to be 67% [24].…”

Climate Change Influenced Female Population Sizes Through Time Across the Indonesian Archipelago

“…The region's prehistory is dominated by population movements, beginning with its first settlement by modern humans approximately 50 kya and continuing to the Islamization of Indonesia during the historic period. Reflecting the rich cultural and linguistic diversity of Indonesia's inhabitants, these eras have also left their mark on the genetic diversity of the individuals who inhabit Indonesia today (Cox et al 2012;Jinam et al 2012;Karafet et al 2010;Kayser 2010;Kayser et al 2003;Lansing et al 2008Lansing et al , 2009Mona et al 2009;Wilder et al 2011;Xu et al 2012).…”