Peopling of the Marianas An mtDNA Perspective

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By Miguel G. Vilar Scientific Manager, Genographic National Geographic Society mvilar@ngs.org

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Abstract: A presentation of research which examined the genetic origins and postsettlement gene flow of Chamorros of the Marianas Islands. The procedure was to infer the origins of the Chamorros by analyzing 360 base pairs of the hypervariable-region 1 (HVS1) of mitochondrial DNA from 105 Chamorros and compared them to lineages from ISEA and neighboring Pacific archipelagoes from the database. As a result, 92% of Chamorros belong to haplogroup E, also found in ISEA but rare in Oceania. The two most numerous E lineages were identical to lineages currently found in Indonesia, while the remaining E lineages differed by only one or two mutations and all were unique to the Marianas. Editor’s Note: This paper, presented at the Marianas History Conference, was not made available for publication.

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--Dr. Miguel Vilar is the Science Manager for National Geographic’s Genographic Project and visiting faculty at the University of Pennsylvania. Miguel is both a molecular anthropologist and a science writer. His fieldwork has taken him to remote places throughout the South Pacific, East Africa, Mesoamerica, and the Caribbean. In the laboratory he researches the modern genetic diversity of human populations from Melanesia, Micronesia, North and Central America, and the Caribbean. Miguel has published in several anthropology and genetics journals, as well as popular science magazines.

2nd Marianas History Conference 2013 ăƒť !333