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Science 10 December 1999:
Vol. 286. no. 5447, pp. 2054 - 2056
DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5447.2054b
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News of the Week

ANTHROPOLOGY:
Proto-Polynesians Quickly Settled Pacific

Bernice Wuethrich

Researchers have long debated the origins of the ancestors of the Polynesian people who settled the islands of the East Pacific. Geneticists argue that seafaring proto-Polynesians originated in Southeast Asia and quickly island-hopped eastward, sweeping through Melanesia in the West Pacific along the way; archaeologists argue that Polynesian ancestors originated in Melanesia itself, a hotbed of human diversity with a 45,000-year record of habitation. Now geneticists have combined DNA and linguistic data from Melanesia to make a new case in last month's American Journal of Physical Anthropology that the archipelago was only a way station.

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)