Anthropologists explored the genetic and linguistic diversity in Northern Island Melanesia, in the Pacific islands off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, and discovered that humans from different populations shared genes much more easily than cultural or linguistic information. A team of anthropologists, including Keith Hunley, University of New Mexico assistant professor of anthropology, published their research in the journal PLoS Genetics.
Hunley collaborated with colleagues from Temple University, Radboud University, Stockholm University and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
The team found that even though people frequently move between villages through marriage, the villages more genetically similar to one another over time, but linguistically the villages are much more resistant to change.
The islands have long been of interest to anthropologists and linguists because they harbor remarkable biological, linguistic and cultural diversity, in part because they hosted one of the earliest migrations of humans from Africa as well as a much more recent migration of biologically and linguistically diverse peoples from East Asia. The larger islands have extensive coast lines and extremely rugged interiors.
The team looked at genetic information from the family groups in the interiors, where generations of individuals have tended to marry someone from the closest small village, as well as from families on the coast where marriage partners may come from distant lands. They found that, although the long history of intermarriage has obscured genetic signals from the early history of the region, the genetic data, and especially the linguistic data, still harbor information about the initial migrations into the region thousands of years ago.
Read the paper here: Genetic and Linguistic Coevolution in Northern Island Melanesia
Hear Keith Hunley discuss his work: Humans More Apt to Share Genes than Language
Media Contact: Karen Wentworth, (505) 277-5627; e-mail: kwent2@unm.edu