National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Pig DNA Study Suggests New Path of Pacific Human Migration


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A man herds pigs along the side of a road in Yunnan Province in China. A new study has used pig DNA to trace human migration from Asia into the Pacific Islands.

The findings counter a long-held notion that people moved as a single cultural unit out of Taiwan. Instead, the researchers say, a variety of cultures dispersed along many routes out of Vietnam and came together in eastern Indonesia about 3,500 years ago.

Photograph by Jodi Cobb/NGS