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. 2014 Jan 21;111(3):936-41.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.1321860111. Epub 2014 Jan 6.

Genome-wide evidence of Austronesian-Bantu admixture and cultural reversion in a hunter-gatherer group of Madagascar

Denis Pierron  1 , Harilanto Razafindrazaka, Luca Pagani, François-Xavier Ricaut, Tiago Antao, Mélanie Capredon, Clément Sambo, Chantal Radimilahy, Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa, Roger M Blench, Thierry Letellier, Toomas Kivisild
Affiliations

Genome-wide evidence of Austronesian-Bantu admixture and cultural reversion in a hunter-gatherer group of Madagascar

Denis Pierron et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Linguistic and cultural evidence suggest that Madagascar was the final point of two major dispersals of Austronesian- and Bantu-speaking populations. Today, the Mikea are described as the last-known Malagasy population reported to be still practicing a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. It is unclear, however, whether the Mikea descend from a remnant population that existed before the arrival of Austronesian and Bantu agriculturalists or whether it is only their lifestyle that separates them from the other contemporary populations of South Madagascar. To address these questions we have performed a genome-wide analysis of >700,000 SNP markers on 21 Mikea, 24 Vezo, and 24 Temoro individuals, together with 50 individuals from Bajo and Lebbo populations from Indonesia. Our analyses of these data in the context of data available from other Southeast Asian and African populations reveal that all three Malagasy populations are derived from the same admixture event involving Austronesian and Bantu sources. In contrast to the fact that most of the vocabulary of the Malagasy speakers is derived from the Barito group of the Austronesian language family, we observe that only one-third of their genetic ancestry is related to the populations of the Java-Kalimantan-Sulawesi area. Because no additional ancestry components distinctive for the Mikea were found, it is likely that they have adopted their hunter-gatherer way of life through cultural reversion, and selection signals suggest a genetic adaptation to their new lifestyle.

Keywords: DNA; migration; settlement.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Genetic variation across the Malagasy individuals compared with Indonesian and African populations. (A) Identity by structure distance intra and interpopulations using the PLINK algorithm (32). Each panel represents the distance between the individuals of one population and the individuals from the other populations. The intrapopulation distance is also represented as the genetic distance between all of the individuals from this population. (B) PCA performed using Eigensoft (40).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Genetic structure of three Malagasy populations. (A) ADMIXTURE analysis involving 25 Austronesian-speaking populations from Island Southeast Asia and one African and one Papuan population for reference. (B) ADMIXTURE analysis focused on African and West Eurasian populations. (C) Dates of admixture for three Malagasy populations estimated by ALDER and using the Lebbo and several African populations as sources. (D) Dates of admixture for three Malagasy populations using Yorubas and several Southeast Asian populations as sources.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
(A) Dates of admixture of West African component in Malagasy and several African populations (using the present Yoruba population as parental population). (B) Dates of admixture in Austronesian-speaking populations of Indonesia with the Papuan component (using the present Papuan sample as parental population).
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