Asia to Africa

Jared Diamond calls them Austronesians. Previous generations called them Malays. Whatever they were called, they sure got around and around.

Photo: Alizul.blogspot.com

Most native Madagascar people today, called Malagasy, can trace their ancestry back to the founding 30 mothers, according to an extensive new DNA study published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society B,. Researchers focused on mitochondrial DNA, passed down from mothers to their offspring. Scientists assume some men were with the women.

"I'm afraid this wasn't a settlement by Amazon seafarers!" lead author Murray Cox told Discovery News. "We propose settlement by a very small group of Indonesian women, around 30, but we also presume from the genetics that there were at least some Indonesian men with them. At this stage, we don't know how many."

Cox, a senior lecturer at Massey University's Institute of Molecular BioSciences, and his colleagues analyzed genetic samples from 2745 individuals hailing from 12 Indonesian archipelago island groups. They then compared the results with genetic information from 266 individuals from three Malagasy ethnic groups: Mikea hunter-gatherers, semi-nomadic Vezo fishermen and the dominant Andriana Merina ethnic group.

Many Malagasy carry a gene tied to Indonesia. The DNA detective work indicates just 30 Indonesian women founded the Malagasy population, with a much smaller biological contribution from Africa. The women may have mated with their male Indonesian travel companions, or with men from Africa.

Discovery.com

This isn't a strange pill to swallow. Growing up in Hawaii, we learned a lot as children about the currents of the Pacific Ocean, how that affection voyages across Polynesia. What they didn't teach us about Melanesia, Micronesia and any other nesia is stuff like this. Some of it wasn't known, that's for sure. DNA testing? Not when I was a kid.

Natural disasters and migration

Yet another typhoon is closing in on the Philippines.

I can't help wondering, with all the horrible typhoons and hurricanes that hit that region of the world -- an area that is widely believed to be launching pad for migration to the Pacific -- if natural disasters were a major reason for exploration.

Maybe the Pacific would've been explored no matter what. That's human nature. But if you're in a place, say 2,000 years ago, that gets hit by natural disasters five times in two years, wouldn't that be impetus to find a safe new home?

Factor in war, battle for fertile land, clean water ... and people would move further and further until they found someplace tolerable. Peaceful.

Harrowing migration

Friday, July 3, 2009
The history of migration, to me, is about people searching for a better life. The route out of North Korea, though, goes beyond the norm.

The story of Myong Hui Eom puts it into perspective. How else does a teacher go from one extreme to the other, from the "utopia," as she puts it, of her home country to realizing that it's not what she thought.

Breaks the heart again and again

Thursday, July 2, 2009
If it seems odd that one of the most Christianized nations in the world is South Korea, consider the peninsula's crisis.

I used to wonder, how and why did South Korea become so strongly Christian? This goes back to my teens, when I went to church with one of my best friends. The kal bi was excellent! But it was much more than that. It was my first real experience being around Christians young, old and in between.

I always wondered later, how Christ came to be such a focal point in a part of the world that is otherwise Buddhist, Shinto and, further south and southwest, Hindu. The how part isn't on my mind these days. The why part, though, is clear now. The faith required to help North Koreans escape the tumult of Kim Il-Jong's regime is enormously deep. Nobody else but missionaries are willing to risk their lives to help North Koreans get across the Tumen River, then through China, all the way down to Thailand, before they can reach freedom in South Korea.

It's something I'm watching on a recent episode of Wide Angle on PBS. Crossing Heaven's Border is a mirror of the reality, the risk, the sacrifice that continues on. While some people get their kicks watching a bunch of spoiled brats act stupid on programs like The Real World, folks in places like North Korea simply want freedom so bad they'll risk being killed. It's enough to make a cynic want to cheer for the underdogs again.

Keally on Yayoi and Jomon cultures

Amusing. I always find it amusing when someone tells me about purity of a culture, of a nation, of a "race." For the record, I'll say that these are hogwash. Every culture has both original facets and borrowed facets. It's just a fact, and it's all around us. But the denial about loaned cultural aspects continues, and I don't really hold it against anyone who fancies his ancestral homeland as one of greatness. I just laugh about assertions of purity.

Take Japan. With all the historical evidence in place, we know that the Jamon culture preceded the Yayoi. There are artifacts throughout Japan with the exception of Hokkaido and Ryukyu (Okinawa). Rice is widely believed to have been imported from central China, not just as a product, but as a skill that revolutionized ancient Japan and fostered population explosion.

Migration of people from the Korean peninsula is also a given. I know there are people today who cringe at the fact that they have Korean and Chinese blood coursing through their veins, but that's just the fact. Live with it, I say, and be thankful that the skill it takes to grow rice was given freely to the original settlers of Japan.

Professor Charles T. Keally breaks it down well: Yayoi Culture

The originals, the Jomon, supposed shared more physical characteristics with Southeast Asians, while the Yayoi resembled Northeast Asians. I wonder why there was migration to Japan from China and Korea, and not so much from Southeast Asia. Was overpopulation more of a crisis issue in those regions?

Kyushu, like Ryukyu and Hokkaido, fascinate me in terms of travelers. Kyushu's location made it much more accessible to mainland peoples and faraway travelers by ship. Does this mean there was a multicultural society there to some degree? I don't know, but if the info is out there, any kind of proof, I hope to find it soon.

One thing that Keally doesn't delve into with this analysis is whether the Ainu are more closely related to the Jomon, the Yayoi or anyone else. Whether the Ainu were simply pushed by warfare or politics to the northern, cold region of Japan, and whether they are related to the Ryukyu people, I also want to know.

Here's a cool site (PDF) with a series of pics in lectures by Prof. John C. Huntington

Early Jomon artifacts
Late Jomon and Yayoi period artifacts, housing technology
Kofun period