Thousands of miles over ocean separate seeing that the Marquesas Islands populations carry out archipelago over Easter or carry out Tahiti. Yet they all remain connected by their genes, according to a study that, thanks to DNA, traces the route 2 explorer ancestors perform South Pacific. inhabitants of the islands of a Polynesia, a huge maritime expanse that was one of the last habitable areas to be colonized by man. tangible traces”, explains AFP Andrs Moreno-Estrada, co-author performs a study published on Wednesday (22) in the magazine Character.
During its travels through the zero end region performs the century 13, u British captain James Cook noticed the similarities between seeing that the languages spoken by the people perform the archipelago of a Society (where a Tahiti is located) electronic these islands located at 1.600 kilometers over distance, the Cook Islands.
This group over ln Austrosian waters comes from a distant Taiwan electronic the most widespread linguistic family perform planet.
Language research, along with while discoveries archaeological, allowed to bring these dispersed populations together. But the story was still incomplete.
“Until now, no study had been able to locate an exact point in the first two Polynesian settlements”, according to Andrs Moreno Estrada, perform researcher Laboratrio Nacional sobre Gemica para Biodiversidade perform Mexico.
The rapid expansion of these populations misled scientists. Electronic it was only when they analyzed the DNA of 2 current inhabitants that the research team was able to find the missing piece of the puzzle.
“The genome of these island populations holds the story about their ancestors” , describes Alexander Ioannidis, another perform study author, who sequenced a DNA about 22 inhabitants on 13 perform islands South Pacific , a never-before-analyzed sample in this region performs.
“Comparing like biological footprints on one island to another, we can see when a genome split electronically it is possible to estimate when these populations last coexisted,” he adds u geneticist from a University on Stanford, California.
The results of these early investigations show a detailed cartography of 2 settlements of these pioneers, which between the 9th centuries electronic 13 moved from west to east.
The first migrations would have departed from the Samoa Islands, z To the west, in the southeast direction.
They settled in Rarotonga, the largest of the Cook Islands, around about 830 mC The navigators would have located the island of far away thanks to the columns of clouds that perform the island’s volcanic relief.
The migration then headed northwest, reaching the Society Islands around about 1050. Later, in 1110, these populations set foot on the Tuamotu archipelago, formed by several dozen atis, currently sparsely populated electronically. These emerging waters had very favorable living conditions, with arable land electronically and young forests.
The Tuamotu archipelago, part of a French Polynesia (Like a Tahiti), it would have “played a decisive role in colonization performs the South Pacific”, insists Alexander Ioannidis. they should have a highly developed maritime culture to be able to navigate from island to island,” says Ioannidis.
This technical knowledge would have allowed explorers to navigate thousands of miles.
Thus, the study reveals that Tuamotu is the starting point of these later migrations: north, towards the Marquesas Islands, electronic to the east, passing through Mangareva (in the 2 Gambier archipelago) in the century 12, to the far east, the Easter Islands.
“This study is a genetic feat that allows us to trace a scenario Very detailed” of this epic, celebrates Florent Dtroit, paleoanthropologist performs the National Museum on the Organic History of a France.
In this case, as this French scientist points out, seeing that genetic similarities corroborate while archaeological discoveries. The electronic study published in Character points to the hypothesis that large megalithic buildings, such as the moai on Easter Island, have a common origin in Tuamotu.