[An-lang] Genetic evidence for Madagascar migration

[Ove Lorentz]

Dear all,

Various news channels are reporting today about what they take as 
genetic evidence for a direct link between Maanyan and Malagasy, based 
on this interesting paper:

Matthew E. Hurles, Bryan C. Sykes, Mark A. Jobling, and Peter Forster. 
The Dual Origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East 
Africa: Evidence from Maternal and Paternal Lineages. Am. J. Hum. 
Genet. 76:894–901, 2005.
http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/resolve?id=doi:10.1086/430051

This would certainly be exciting news, but since Banjarmasin was the 
only location within Indonesia that was included in the sample, such a 
conclusion is a bit premature, as the authors clearly state themselves 
(on p 499f):

"Among the 10 potential ancestral populations in Island Southeast Asia 
and Oceania that we sampled, the Borneo populations had Y-chromosomal 
haplogroup distributions that were the most similar to those observed 
among the Malagasy. This observation is in striking agreement with the 
linguistic evidence that the Malagasy language is most closely related 
to the Maanyan language from the Barito River Valley in southern 
Borneo. Now that we have identified the region of origin for this Asian 
migration to Madagascar, further microgeographic sampling within 
Indonesian islands may pinpoint more precisely the origins of the 
Malagasy."

Ove Lorentz

--
Ove Lorentz, Sen. Researcher, CASTL, Univ. of Tromso, N-9037 Tromso, 
Norway
Tel +47 776 44267. Fax +47 776 45625
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