Scientists have been able to understand the dispersal of ancient chicken breeds, which has helped them make a more educated guess about the migration of Polynesian people.
By matching a genetic signature of the original Polynesian chickens with the DNA collected from modern chickens, scientists have been able to retract the path of early Polynesians from the islands of Southeast Asia to the Pacific islands to South America, according to a University of Adelaide press release.
"We have identified genetic signatures of the original Polynesian chickens, and used these to track early movements and trading patterns across the Pacific," said lead author Dr. Vicki Thomson, a researcher at University of Adelaide's Australian Center for Ancient DNA, according to the release. "We were also able to trace the origins of these lineages back into the Philippines, providing clues about the source of the original Polynesian chicken populations."
Researchers from Australian National University, University of Sydney, and Durham and Aberdeen Universities in the UK, used "female-inherited" mitochondrial DNA removed from chicken bones dug up in archaeological digs from islands, like Niue, Hawaii, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island), according to the release.
"There are still many theories about where the early human colonists of the remote Pacific came from, which routes they followed and whether they made contact with the South American mainland. Domestic animals, such as chickens, carried on these early voyages have left behind a genetic record that can solve some of these long standing mysteries," said Associate Professor Jeremy Austin, ACAD Deputy Director, according to the release.
The researchers were able to re-examine bones, used in previous studies that had linked ancient South American and Pacific chickens, said Project leader Professor Alan Cooper, Director of ACAD. This suggests early human contact, and some of the resulted were likely contaminated with modern chicken DNA.
They were able to prove that the ancient chicken DNA provided "no evidence" of any pre-Columbian contact between these areas, according to Cooper.
"Remarkably, our study also shows that the original Polynesian lineages appear to have survived on some isolated Pacific islands, despite the introduction of European domestic animals across the Pacific in the last couple of hundred years," Cooper said, according to the release. "These original lineages could be of considerable importance to the poultry industry which is concerned about the lack of genetic diversity in commercial stocks."
Their research on the origins and dispersal of ancient Polynesian chickens was published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.
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