Table of Contents
Data on genetic distance and unique allele distributions are presented for a number of Austronesian and non-Austronesian (Papuan) linguistic populations in the western Pacific. These data confirm separate origins for both of these major populations, but also suggest the existence of much subsequent gene flow between them. Genetic links between Australia and New Guinea are probably very remote in time.
In 1965, Giles, Ogan and Steinberg claimed a clear-cut discrimination based on tests for the Gm system between Austronesian (An) and non-Austronesian (NAn) speakers in the Markham River Valley of Papua New Guinea. Because of a failure later to find a similar discrimination between An and NAn speakers on Bougainville, there has been critical and sometimes heated debate on (a) the usefulness of genetics for studying An and NAn origins, and (b) the validity of the model which suggests that An and NAn-speakers have different biological origins.
These competing views have been highlighted from differing perspectives by John Terrell in his Prehistory of the Pacific Islands (1986), Jonathan Friedlaender in his concluding chapter of The Solomon Islands Project (1987), and by Sue Serjeantson and Adrian Hill in The colonization of the Pacific (1989). The last conclude (Serjeantson and Hill 1989:287):
… the extreme view taken by Terrell (1986) and White et al. (1988), that Polynesians evolved within Melanesia from a population resident there for at least 30,000 years, is untenable in the light of the genetic evidence.
In the present volume Serjeantson and Gao provide further evidence for this position, based on information derived from analysis of HLA genes. The present discussion complements the HLA analysis by reviewing evidence collected over the past 20 years for a large number of blood-genetic traits and subjecting the data to newer multivariate analytical techniques.