6
1 Introduction
moreover, suggests that the direction of ancient gene flow was from Island Southeast
Asia to Taiwan rather than from Taiwan to Island Southeast Asia [4].
In 2004 strong evidence not just for a Wallacean but more specifically for a
Spice Island origin for the Polynesian peoples was provided by the innovative
work of archaeobiologists Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith and J.H. Robins who studied the migration history of the Pacific rat which was carried into the Pacific by
Polynesians as a food animal. Constructing a neighbour-joining tree, Matisoo-Smith
and Robins traced both of the haplogroups that are found in the Pacific specifically
to Halmahera, establishing this island as the homeland for the Pacific rat and, by
implication, for the people who carried it into the Pacific [5]. In 2005 the case for
a Lapita and Polynesian homeland in the Spice Islands was strengthened by genetic
evidence from a major worldwide study of centres of pig domestication which established that the pig carried into the Pacific by the Lapita and Polynesian peoples
belonged to a separate clade from the Taiwanese pig [6]. The authors suggested that
the Polynesian pig was probably indigenous to the Spice Islands or Wallacea. In
2007 further work in this area found the Polynesian pig to be indigenous to peninsular Southeast Asia but charted its introduction to the Moluccas (the Spice Islands),
supporting a Spice Island base for its introduction into the Pacific [7].
1.3 Cold Adaptation
Additional genetic support for a Spice Island origin for the so-called Lapita peoples
and their Polynesian descendants rests in evidence that, as Philip Houghton shows,
present-day Polynesians possess the highest level of cold resistance by any people
on the planet [8] although most Polynesians live in a tropical region and MatisooSmith and Robins’ research shows they descended from people who lived on the
equator (the equator actually passes through Halmahera). As non-sex-linked genes
are involved in determining cold adaptation and these genes are estimated to mutate
at only a tenth of the rate of mitochondrial DNA [9], tens of thousands of years of
exposure to cold may well have been needed for the evolution of such a degree of
cold resistance.
Houghton’s research [10], one of the evidence bases we call on, is discussed
in detail in Chapter 2. It establishes as a fundamental premise that without high
levels of genetic cold resistance and famine resistance the Lapita peoples and their
Polynesian descendants would not have been physiologically capable of exploring
and colonizing the Pacific.
But where Houghton argues for a late fast evolution of cold resistance in Island
Melanesia en route to Western Polynesia, we see Polynesian cold resistance as arising, rather, from a 40,000-year-long maritime history in the Spice Islands, the first
30,000 years of this history played out on sailing rafts in the last Ice Age. We see
the evolution of the Spice Islanders’ cold resistance as being correlated, moreover,
with the economic and maritime expansions that shaped their history as they moved
from local to regional to international spice trading.
1 Introduction
moreover, suggests that the direction of ancient gene flow was from Island Southeast
Asia to Taiwan rather than from Taiwan to Island Southeast Asia [4].
In 2004 strong evidence not just for a Wallacean but more specifically for a
Spice Island origin for the Polynesian peoples was provided by the innovative
work of archaeobiologists Elizabeth Matisoo-Smith and J.H. Robins who studied the migration history of the Pacific rat which was carried into the Pacific by
Polynesians as a food animal. Constructing a neighbour-joining tree, Matisoo-Smith
and Robins traced both of the haplogroups that are found in the Pacific specifically
to Halmahera, establishing this island as the homeland for the Pacific rat and, by
implication, for the people who carried it into the Pacific [5]. In 2005 the case for
a Lapita and Polynesian homeland in the Spice Islands was strengthened by genetic
evidence from a major worldwide study of centres of pig domestication which established that the pig carried into the Pacific by the Lapita and Polynesian peoples
belonged to a separate clade from the Taiwanese pig [6]. The authors suggested that
the Polynesian pig was probably indigenous to the Spice Islands or Wallacea. In
2007 further work in this area found the Polynesian pig to be indigenous to peninsular Southeast Asia but charted its introduction to the Moluccas (the Spice Islands),
supporting a Spice Island base for its introduction into the Pacific [7].
1.3 Cold Adaptation
Additional genetic support for a Spice Island origin for the so-called Lapita peoples
and their Polynesian descendants rests in evidence that, as Philip Houghton shows,
present-day Polynesians possess the highest level of cold resistance by any people
on the planet [8] although most Polynesians live in a tropical region and MatisooSmith and Robins’ research shows they descended from people who lived on the
equator (the equator actually passes through Halmahera). As non-sex-linked genes
are involved in determining cold adaptation and these genes are estimated to mutate
at only a tenth of the rate of mitochondrial DNA [9], tens of thousands of years of
exposure to cold may well have been needed for the evolution of such a degree of
cold resistance.
Houghton’s research [10], one of the evidence bases we call on, is discussed
in detail in Chapter 2. It establishes as a fundamental premise that without high
levels of genetic cold resistance and famine resistance the Lapita peoples and their
Polynesian descendants would not have been physiologically capable of exploring
and colonizing the Pacific.
But where Houghton argues for a late fast evolution of cold resistance in Island
Melanesia en route to Western Polynesia, we see Polynesian cold resistance as arising, rather, from a 40,000-year-long maritime history in the Spice Islands, the first
30,000 years of this history played out on sailing rafts in the last Ice Age. We see
the evolution of the Spice Islanders’ cold resistance as being correlated, moreover,
with the economic and maritime expansions that shaped their history as they moved
from local to regional to international spice trading.