Genetic History of the Pacific Islands: Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia

the Pacific Ocean makes up around half of the entirety of the Earth's surface the Pacific Ocean is so vast and so empty if you were to dig a tunnel into the ground straight through the center of the earth in the Gulf of Thailand or the gulf of tonkin two areas of the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Southeast Asia when you came out of the other side of the earth you would technically still be in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of South America one thing that Hollywood movies do get right about the area is that there is almost nothing out there in the Pacific since over 99% of the 64 million square miles is nothing but water however only 1% of land area that does exist in the region lies populations so mysterious and incomprehensible to most of the world that even modern linguists haven't finished classifying all of the languages and people groups that are there let me introduce you to the region of Oceania and it is for all intents and purposes the last habitable region of the planet Earth to be discovered by the Western world the definition of Oceania varies from source to source but for this video we're going to define it as the regions of Melanesia Micronesia Polynesia and Australia just exactly why Western scholars and educators refer to the continent as Australia instead of Oceania is beyond me but that is the lexicon we use now to begin the first humans began to enter the region about fifty to sixty thousand years ago and their descendants are the multiple Melanesian groups that populate Australia and of course the region of Melanesia Melanesia is made up of the island of New Guinea which includes the country of Papua New Guinea and the territory of Irian Jaya which actually belongs to the country of Indonesia as well as various island chains such as the Solomon Islands Vanuatu newsela Donia and Fiji Australian Aborigines officially make up about 3% of the population with the highest concentration being in Australia's Northern Territory at around 30% although this also includes people that are mixed with other racial groups so the real number of pure blooded Aborigines probably sits at no higher than 1.5 percent this is due to a variety of factors but one of the big contributions to this is that in Australia nearly three-quarters of all self-identified Aborigines will marry a non Aboriginal spouse which further dilutes their genes and since almost 90 percent of mixed children identify as Aboriginal there are some self-identified Aboriginal Australians that can pass for European or some other racial group the Australian Aborigines are very heterogeneous population divided into many different groups with there being at least 150 different Aboriginal ethnic groups and there is more linguistic diversity between Aboriginal groups than in any other region on the planet the island of New Guinea and the territories of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands are also Melanesian that have been separated from the Australian Aborigines for at least a few thousand years Melanesians from these places have a very high rate of blonde hair as high as eighty percent in some tribes however in most cases this blonde hair is only found in children and generally dissipates with age for those who are wondering this adaptation is believed to evolved independently from Europeans the country of Fiji is unique because they actually have a huge number of Indians one of the highest percentages in the world in fact around 40% of Fiji's population they come from literally all parts of India and they're about 75% Hindu with smaller numbers of Muslim and Christian minorities the native Fijians also known as itk are Melanesians related to the people from Vanuatu however few people actually know that there is a second island in the country of Fiji known as rotoma and the indigenous rhodomont people are actually Polynesian in origin rather than Melanesian the country of new salad Oh Nia is oh wait that's not a country at all but a territory and overseas territory to be exact that belongs to France well the native to this island are called the Kanak people although there's been a huge influx of Europeans to the territory since its discovery in 1850 and they make up around 1/3 of the population interestingly there's also a small community of era burgers from Algeria on the island that were deported there in the late 19th century as punishment for an attempted uprising against the French North African Authority let's move on to the region of Polynesia which is arguably one of the most vast and expansive cultural regions on the planet being confined to what is known as the Polynesian triangle more on the exact borders of that later Polynesian people are related to the Austronesian people - that originated out of Taiwan and spread out over much of Southeast Asia since the austronesians were such excellent seafarers they eventually spread out to Polynesia intermittently mixing and interacting with the native pappan peoples of the island of New Guinea which they passed through for this reason the various Polynesians have a very wide-ranging phenotype ranging from some individuals with very dark skin who might even be able to pass for an Indian while some are very pale more resembling East Asians it appears there are many different Polynesian ethnic groups scattered throughout the over 1,000 islands in the region the largest of which being a Maori or Maori people of New Zealand who are actually one of the newest groups in a region being the first humans to arrive on the islands of New Zealand around 800 years ago they make up about seven percent of New Zealand's population but this expands to 15 percent when people of partial Maori descent are included almost all Polynesian groups are well known for having intricate and elaborate tribal tattoos in some cases decorating their entire bodies but the Maori have many other unique traditions such as their famous kapa haka dance used by modern rugby teams in the Pacific to intimidate their opponents in the present the majority of New Zealand is of European descent mostly from the British Isles but there is a large growing halation from east and south asia one of the largest groups of Polynesians are the Native Hawaiians and although they only number about 80,000 in Hawaii making them one of the smaller ethnic groups at a meager six percent of their homeland a further 300 thousand Americans have at least some Hawaiian ancestry either in Hawaii or the mainland the United States white Americans make up around a quarter of Hawaii's population and interestingly people of East and Southeast Asian descent make up the largest share of the population due to a large-scale recent emigration from the Philippines as well as much older immigration from Japan in fact by the year 1900 over 40 percent of Hawaii's population was Japanese descent although this percentage has declined since perhaps the most mysterious and in a way infamous of all Polynesian islands is the territory of Easter Island which is actually a part of the South American Hispanic nation of Chile the natives to this island are known as the Rapa Nui and their most notable contribution has to be the large stone heads of Easter Island that populate the land giving rumors to conspiracy theories that these artifacts were made in whole or in part by time travelers or even aliens the natives were nearly wiped to extinction after European discovery with only 36 fertile Rapa Nui on the island in the year 1877 but in the present day their numbers have somewhat recovered with around 6,000 people of partial or full Rapa Nui descent making up 60 to 70% of Easter islands population it's honestly a little insane to think just how far and just how long the ancient Polynesians would have had to travel by boat just to reach all of the islands that they currently inhabit today with the northern point of the Polynesian triangle that is why being almost five thousand miles away from New Zealand the southwesternmost point which is in turn four thousand miles away from the easternmost point Easter Island the region of Micronesia the smallest of the Pacific island chains yet doesn't fail to have a great amount of historical and human diversity through its various countries and territories politically the region is dominated by the United States who have administered or currently administer literally every territory of Micronesia except Kiribati ever since the Americans confiscated the island group from Japan after the latter's defeat in World War two Micronesia people split off from Polynesians about two thousand years ago and are also of Austronesian origin although they have a bit more Melanesian genetic input than Polynesians as well as having ancestry from various nations that have had a presence in the region the first to colonize the islands in an imperialistic fashion were actually the Spanish and many Micronesians from Guam or other islands may have partial Spanish heritage next the land was ceded to the Germans who admittedly didn't do a lot with the islands and after Germany's defeat in World War one Japan took over the entire region and from the period of World War one to World War two attempted to replace many of the native Micronesians peoples with ethnic yamato citizens from japan an effort to make the islands more Japanese so that they could be properly annexed into the expanding Japanese Empire today there are many immigrants of Asian descent in the various Micronesia countries with a territory of the Northern Mariana Islands being over one-third Filipino there are two islands that don't really fit into any of the previously mentioned routes yet have a distinct connection to each other and these are the Pitcairn Islands and Norfolk Island in the Pacific Ocean Pitcairn Island was originally uninhabited and all people of Pitcairn Eze descent are descended from a mere nine British sailors who mutiny Don their British Royal Navy vessel in the Pacific in 1789 the mutineers took the ship to nearby Tahiti where the men picked up several Polynesian Tahitian women and eventually landed on the island Pitcairn the descendants of these mutineers are known as Pitcairn Island errs or pit current people a more mix of European mostly English Irish Cornish as well as Tahitians and other Polynesians even though the Pitcairn Islands today only has a population of about 50 people there are hundreds of other people with ancestry from the island mostly in New Zealand and Australia but especially North Oak Island 4000 miles away we're about half the population has Pitt curve routes so before we end the video a couple announcements first off we did hit 1,000 subscribers on the channel about a week ago which is pretty amazing if you ask me so next video is going to be a Q&A of sword so go ahead and ask me your questions down below in the comments also I am finally opening up a patreon account so that people can donate to the channel if you'd like better production values and please let me know your thoughts on the Pacific region down in the comments below now as always this has been Mason thanks for watching everyone now see you next time

Channel: Masaman

Views: 420,646

Rating: 4.7449975 out of 5

Keywords: masaman, Maori, New Zealand, Australia, Australian Aborigines, Fiji, New Caledonia, Pacific, Polynesia, Race, Ethnicity, History, Genetics, DNA, DNA Test Results, 23&me, 23 and me, Ancestry, Melanesians, Polynesians, Micronesians, Iwi, Indigenous Australians, Pacific Islands, Human Migration, Nauru, Fijians, Indo-Fijians, Indians in Australia, White Australians, History of the Pacific, Guam, Melanesia, Micronesia, Genetic History, History of the Pacific Islands, Papua New Guinea, Pakeha

Id: l8calZOhVv8

Length: 12min 5sec (725 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 15 2017