New Theory on Origin of Australian Aborigines

choi

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Gautam Naik, Clues to Man's First Migration; Genes from Australia point to several waves African dispersal, not just one. Wall Street Journal, Sept 23, 2011.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904563904576586783498941802.html

My comment:
(a) If you can not read the report (because WSJ restricts how many a person can view its article for free), you can read

Ann Gibbons, Aboriginal Genome Shows Two-Wave Settlement of Asia. Science, 333: 1689-1691 (Sept 23, 2011).
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6050/1689.full
("The complete genome is the first from an Australian Aboriginal, and it came from a man born before his people had mixed with Europeans or Asians. Although the DNA in the hair was highly fragmented, Willerslev's team was able to get 6× coverage of the overall genome")

The News and Analysis report heralds a paper of the same issue, as well as
Reich D et al, Denisova Admixture and the First Modern Human Dispersals into Southeast Asia and Oceania. American Journal of Human Genetics, _: _ (Sept 22, 2011)
http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(11)00395-8

Written from Australia's perspective, aborigines or aboriginals (which means the same) mean those of Australia.

(b) Please note that the paper advances a novel model that is not tested, which is Australia aborigines are the direct descendants of Africans who left Africa, as opposed to descendants, or a branch, of latter-day Asians.

WSJ mentions the "conventional model": "that there was only a single dispersal from Africa, some 60,000 to 70,000 years ago" and one group headed north and became Europeans and the other group headed east along the sea coasts and became Indians, then southeast Asians--who then split north to China and south to Australia.

(c) Melanesia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanesia
(d) Austronesian peoples
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austronesian_peoples

It is established that aborigines of Taiwan, Micronesia and Polynesia demonstrate language, biological (down to DNA) and archaelogical similarities. The similarities extend to aborigines in the conventional Melanesia (such as Solomon Islands, Vanuatu,  and Fiji--but not with those in Papua New Guinea (part of Melanesia) or in Australia.

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