Comparing Western and Eastern Polynesians

In my last blog entry “Tiny Segments from the Same Common Ancestors“, I began comparing Western Polynesians (Samoans & Tongans), and Eastern Polynesians (Maori and Hawaiians), and compared them to each other in order to show how the tiny segments appeared like missing teeth on the chromosome browser.  Now I will show how people compare to each other based on total centimorgans and their longest block (FTDNA).

First I compare Tongans and Samoans to each other.  Both Samoans and Tongans are Western Polynesians and are the most diverse.   Polynesian settlement began in the west in the Tonga/Samoa/Fiji area.  I mentioned this in a previous entry “Loss of heterozygosity – from Western Polynesia to Eastern Polynesia.”

T = Tongan
S = Samoan
– = no match

I colored it to make it easier to see or compare Tongans to Tongans in light green, and Samoans to Samoans in light blue.  The ones not colored are comparing Samoans to Tongans.  The top number is the total shared in centimorgans, while the bottom number is the longest block (largest segment).  The average totals seem to be between the upper 200s to mid-300s. The lower numbers (in the hundreds) is due to the fact that the person is admixed.  In other words, they are not pure Samoan/Tongan, and usually have some European ancestry.

Comparing Tongans to themselves:
TOTAL
lowest –  117cM (part Tongan)
highest – 340cM
average – 258cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.79cM
highest – 10.51cM
average – 8.54cM

Comparing Samoans to themselves:
TOTAL
lowest – 165cM (part Samoan)
highest – 366cM
average – 271cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.66cM
highest – 16.54cM
average – 9.20cM

Comparing Tongans to Samoans:
TOTAL
lowest –  143cM
highest – 321cM
average – 248cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.79cM
highest – 11.07cM
average – 7.81cM

This is what it looks like when I compare those same Tongans and Samoans to Hawaiians and Maoris who are Eastern Polynesians.

H = Hawaiian
M = Maori
T = Tongan
S = Samoan
? = unable to determine if a match
– = no match

In this graph, I again colored it for easy comparison.  Hawaiian vs. Tongans in light brown, Hawaiians vs. Samoans in golden yellow, Maoris vs. Tongans in pink, and Maoris vs. Samoans in light green.

Most of the Eastern Polynesians are admixed except for two Hawaiians and one Maori.  But those that are admixed are still more than 75% Polynesian which still keeps the totals fairly high as you can clearly see it still above one hundred with the exception of one Hawaiian who is admixed to the Tongan that is admixed.  In fact, that admixed Tongan only shares with one Hawaiian and one Maori, both less than 100cM.  Yet their longest block still falls within the range.

Comparing Hawaiians to Tongans:
TOTAL
lowest – 72cM
highest – 341cM
average – 199cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.34cM
highest – 12.12cM
average – 7.94cM

Comparing Hawaiians to Samoans:
TOTAL
lowest –  135cM
highest – 314cM
average – 213cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.09cM
highest – 11.50cM
average -7.57cM

Comparing Maoris to Tongans:
TOTAL
lowest –  68cM
highest – 240cM
average – 202cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.31cM
highest – 10.94cM
average – 7.87cM
Comparing Maoris to Samoans:

TOTAL
lowest –  147cM
highest – 278cM
average – 229cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 5.28cM
highest – 10.94cM
average -7.81cM

When looking at the average, it seems to be consistent as far as comparing Eastern Polynesians to any Western Polynesian.  However that changes drastically when comparing Eastern Polynesians to themselves.

H = Hawaiian
M = Maori
? = unable to determine if a match
– = no match

I colored Hawaiians in light blue and Maoris in light green when comparing to themselves.  The non-colored portion is when they one group is compared to the other.

Comparing Hawaiians to Hawaiians:
TOTAL
lowest –  225cM
highest – 780cM
average – 463cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 8.45cM
highest – 23.58cM
average -14.90cM

Comparing Maoris to Maoris:
TOTAL
lowest –  581cM
highest – 694cM
average – 641cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 12.51cM
highest – 19.98cM
average -16.66cM

Comparing Maoris to Hawaiians:
TOTAL
lowest –  291cM
highest – 773cM
average – 514cM

LONGEST BLOCK
lowest – 8.98cM
highest – 29.68cM
average -16.20cM

So to recap, showing just the average total shared and the average longest block size:

Although I used only 3 Maoris compared to 8 Hawaiians, it was based on the top matches to my mother.  There were a few more Maoris but I did not have access to their data and that would have allowed more “?” in the charts.  But as we can see, the Western Polynesians tend to have lower totals since they are more diverse unlike the Eastern Polynesians.  More admixed Polynesians will result in lower totals, but the longest block is not that much difference from those not admixed.

In the future I will probably attempt to look at admixed Polynesians and compare them to show the average longest block sizes compared to those not admixed.

Small segments on the X; male vs. female

Kitty Cooper put out a blog post where she entitled it What Can the X Chromosome Tell Us About the Importance of Small Segments? by Kathy Johnson.   Kathy Johnson had gone through the males in her project and began analyzing and compared to females, determining how much of the females were producing false positives vs. the men.  Because not many men would get a lot of X-matches.  This seems to be an ongoing investigation with various people blogging about the validity of phasing, or rather how effective if not necessarily is it to weed out any false positive matches. It seems to be based on FamilyTreeDNA’s X-matches where they include many tiny segments as little as 1cM.  And the more substantial matches with 10cM or more tends to reduce the actual X-matches significantly, which would be due to the lack of phasing.  You can read more about it on Kitty’s blog, although most of the discussion about evaluating all of these matches took place outside of the blog and on Facebook’s “International Society of Genetic Genealogy” page.

That made me curious, because others have expressed how some men had little to no X-matches.  This was not my situation at all , and went through my list of 9 pages on FTDNA and counted 47 X-matches out of the total 89 matches that I have.  I noticed that one of them was actually an X match on my father’s side of matches, a Filipino.  I knew that was wrong.  So when I looked at it, no X match showed up in the chromosome browser until I reduced the threshold down to 1+cM where I saw a 1.9cM, a false match.

Aside from one woman mislabeled as a male in my matches, I actually have 20 men and 26 females as X-matches, not counting that Filipino false match.  That’s half of my matches.  My mother has 93 X-matches out of her 159 matches, so not that much more than me.  Could that indicate that my mother’s X-matches are more, or less of false matches?  It’s an interesting idea to see how men can have less false matches but we are looking at Polynesian matches which just adds something else to it.

I know that I do have a lot of my matches below 5cM on the X chromosome, so I used dnagedcom.com’s ADSA (autosomal DNA segment analyzer) to at least look at my ICW (in common with) matches on the X, but I had increased the threshold to 700SNPs and 10cM.

I was thinking that not only would it be easier to use this tool by instantly seeing my X-matches above a specific threshold, but it would also compare me with others with whom we share the same segments, therefore decreasing the chances of false matches.  But taking into consideration that we are referring to Polynesians.  How would that affect it really?

I cannot determine from comparing my own to my mother’s X-matches if they would be false matches or not. Our problem, lack of documentation, lack of genetic diversity and the unpredictability of the X chromosome itself just to mention a few.

I have recently begun testing my first cousins on my non-Hawaiian side in order to take a closer look at the X chromosome and how that is passed on knowing the X path, that is how it is passed on unrecombined from father to daughter versus mother to children.  I also felt that knowing how it is passed on, it would be easier to distinguish which part of the chromosome was inherited from my grandfather versus my grandmother.  And not until I begin testing relatives from each of my grandparents’ side, I will not be able to fully distinguish all of them with the rest of the other 22 pairs of chromosomes.

Having said that, I cannot see how these X-matches, at least among Polynesians would be consist of a lot of false segments or not.  Especially when there are long segments with the more distant people, e.g., Maoris or Samoans and Tongans, of which I do have X matches with.  But the Samoans and Tongans are not included in the ICW due to the fact that I increased the threshold to exclude anything below 10cM.

I also used Gedmatch’s ONE TO MANY to get all my matches, sorted them by the largest segment on the X and just looked at how many were above 10cM.  There were only 20.

I did the same for my brother, he got 17 above 10cM.  I also looked at other Polynesian men just to compare and the numbers varied, usually not exceeding 20 with 10cM minimum threshold.  It is still all interesting although it is hard to decipher how much of it is true for Polynesians.  Hopefully as more Polynesians get tested, we will start to notice more differences, or confirm that we just all have a high amount of X-matches.

Polynesia Category – AncestryDNA.com

Earlier this year I tested with Ancestry.com (or AncestryDNA.com) since I’ve been noticing non-Polynesians coming up with this new category.  This is way after the fact the research does not specify a Polynesia component, but rather a Melanesian and Asian or East Asian or Southeast Asian component.  I have seen other Asians, specifically Filipinos coming up with decent amount of this Polynesia category, as well as those of European descent coming up with small traces of Polynesia.

Under their Polynesia category, it mentions the sampling size was 18, and that one of the samples showed 11% Scandinavian.  A larger sampling size would yield better results especially in this case where one of the 18 samples had some European admixture.  This was enough to cause those with Scandinavian ancestry to come up with small traces of Polynesia, and in return cause people to wonder how they could have ever had such ancestry in their lineage to a point where some people create possible scenarios how they could have inherited this less than 0.1% Polynesia.

 

Their Polynesia category was one of those categories where they had the least amount of samples.

After receiving my results, as I suspected due to the fact that I am half Filipino, my percentage of the Polynesia category was pretty inflated.  It showed that I had 57% Polynesia versus 34% Asia East.  Knowing that my mother is 80% Hawaiian, and that my father was pure Filipino, I figured the amount of Asia that I showed 34% was missing 16% that was thrown into the Polynesia category.  That would in turn leave me with 41% Polynesia.  My mother is 20% European, and according to Ancestry I am 8% Europe, which seems to be about right.  The other DNA companies I tested at showed more than 10% Europe.  But adding the 41% plus the 8% comes out about right, 49%.

Recently I had a cousin on my father’s side of the family test, and she got her results.  She too is half Filipino, while her other half is completely Europe.  I expected her to show some Polynesia but I did not even guess how much that would be.  I was surprised to see 16% Polynesia for her, which is the same amount I had deducted from my own.  In fact, she shows 33% Asia while I show 34% Asia, and more specifically we both share 31% Asia East.  So they both are consistent.

Although my mother was given an AncestryDNA kit, she has yet to take it.  But I can easily guess that she will easily show 20% Europe and 80% Polynesia.  Any other person who is Polynesian but admixed with some other Asian it may include part of their Asian component into Polynesia.  Maybe the fact that we are Filipinos and they have ancestral ties is why some of it is classified as such.  I did have another paternal cousin tested, she is half Filipino and half Japanese so not sure what type of results that will yield with the Polynesia category.  Will it be the same and show her as 16% Polynesia?  Or will it give her more due to her Japanese ancestry, or is that different enough to not be classified under the Polynesia category?

To find out more about AncestryDNA’s ethnicity/ancestry categories, you can read through their Ethnicity Estimate White Paper.

Polynesian mtDNA in Botocudo of Brazil

Back in mid-September Roberta Estes had a blog entry Native American Mitochondrial Haplogroups.  It’s basically a list of mitochondrial haplogroups that exists among Native Americans.  But what caught my eye was the Polynesian motif – B4a1a1.  She wrote, “B4a1a1 – found in skeletal remains of the now extinct Botocudos (Aimores) Indians of Brazil, thought to perhaps have arrived from Polynesia via the slave trade.  This haplogroup is found in 20% of the mtDNA of Madagascar. Goncalves 2013” and “B4a1a1a – found in skeletal remains of the now extinct Botocudos (Aimores) Indians of Brazil, thought to perhaps have arrived from Polynesia via the slave trade.  This haplogroup is found in 20% of the mtDNA of Madagascar. Goncalves 2013.”   And although there is the actual research out there, it started with an article back in April 2013 titled, “DNA study links indigenous Brazilians to Polynesians.”  Although the article’s title itself only mentions a link, it can be confusing to the reader and can be misleading once you begin reading through it.

The article quoted Lisa Matisoo-Smith, a molecular anthropologist at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand where she said, “But to call that haplogroup Polynesian is a bit of a misnomer,”  since the haplogroup is known to be in populations as far west as in Madagascar.  The actual research can be found here, Identification of Polynesian mtDNA haplogroups in remains of Botocudo Amerindians from Brazil. It basically says that “Here we report the identification of mitochondrial sequences belonging to haplogroups characteristic of Polynesians in DNA extracted from ancient skulls of the now extinct Botocudo Indians from Brazil.”   She does not seem to have been referring to the actual Polynesian motif but the fact that the research cited the mutations that is defined as the Polynesian motif.

The paper questions how did the presence of a Polynesian mtDNA show up in the gene pool of an extinct Brazilian Amerindian group who lived in the interior of Brazil?  There are specific mutations occurring on the mitochondrial which identifies it as the Polynesian motif,  and considering the evolutionary history of the Polynesian motif which is associated with the Austronesian expansion and the settling of Polynesia being much more recent than the peopling of the Americas.  Why hypothesizing how the introduction of the Polynesian motif could have entered into South America, the article says in part, “….considering an ancient Paleoamerican origin of the Botocudo haplotypes, we should expect new ‘private’ mutations to have appeared.  On the other hand, because we did not sequence the whole mtDNA, we cannot rule out the existence of such variations in the coding region.”

What is interesting to note is that is it not certain that these two skulls that they have analyzed were actual Polynesians or not. That is due to the fact that there was never a full sequencing test done on those two skulls that came up with the mutations that indicate the Polynesian motif.  Instead, only HVR1, HVR2 and typed specific mutations on the coding region were sequenced.  The findings mention specifically:  6719C, 15746G, 14022G and 12239T. These specific mutations on the coding region not only exists in my own mtDNA results (B4a1a1a3, now known as B4a1a1c) but so does a friend of mine who is identified as having the Malagasy motif. The paper already mentioned how these two skulls could have come back with such a haplogroup is possibly through the slave trade, originally from Madagascar.  And there were trips originating from Madagascar that eventually took these slaves into Brazil.

So the real question is were these two skulls the result of that recent slave trade originating from Madagascar, or did somehow a very few handful of Polynesians made their way all the way to Brazil?  The Botocudos lived in the interior portion of the state of Minas Gerais, so very far from the Pacific Ocean.

Lisa Matisoo-Smith  said it best, that to call that haplogroup Polynesian is a bit of a misnomer, particularly because we know it also exists in the Philippines and the subgroup – B4a1a1b (Malagasy motif) is in Madagascar.  Until a full sequencing test is done, there still may be some debate as to whether or not Polynesians have gone that far into the interior of South America, or that these skulls were the descendants of Malagasy brought over during the slave trade.

Pili kūpuna

Pili kūpuna.  A term much more fitting than “endogamous” which the dictionary defines as, “the custom of marrying only within the limits of a local community, clan or tribe.”

From a Hawaiian perspective: pili ma nā kūpuna. Adhering by way of forebears.  Basically what it translates to is a relation to the ancestors; that is, more distant relationship which belonged to the granparentsʻ generation or before.  Based on two words, pili and kupuna.

 

There is an ʻolelo noʻeau (proverb) that says: he ʻohana kiko moa.  “Family that hatches like chickens.”  It was an expression used to mock those who mated with no regard to relationship.  In ancient times, intermarriage was encouraged among the high chiefs, not for the commoners.

This emphasizes the fact that Hawaiians were not necessarily intermarrying on purpose, as it was strictly reserved for the chiefs.  More so after the arrival of the missionaries in 1820 and since then even the chiefs stopped intermarrying, followed by an influx of immigrants from various parts of the world such as the U.S.A., Europe and Asia.  And although we are aware of who are relatives are, and the fact that we do not necessarily intermarry our own known close relatives, we can still come up as a close cousin match.  Which is why endogamy is not really an accurate term, since it was not really the custom.  I cannot speak for other Polynesians, but definitely not among Hawaiians who have been isolated for at least 500 years.  And we are still closely related on a genetic level to Maoris of New Zealand and other Polynesians.

Pili kupuna definitely fits as to how Polynesians relate to each other, culturally and of course genetically.

Presentation on Polynesian DNA

I made a presentation to help other Polynesians understand DNA and what some of the research mentions about Polynesians, and what I’ve already covered in my blog about matches, endogamy, and the misleading close matches that we get.

Polynesian DNA Presentation

Lack of Genetic Diversity

I keep telling people that when it comes to Polynesian DNA,  we lack genetic diversity.  People erroneously use “pedigree collapse”, or the more blunt “inbred” when referring to endogamous groups.  But both terms are not specific to our type of DNA situation, and research supports what Polynesians have gone through with their migratory patterns over the past few thousand years.

From oral tradition, we know that Tahiti, at one point in time was the center of religion.  From Taputapuatea, a sacred marae on Ra’iatea (old name was Havai’i) was where Polynesians from other island countries came and they worshiped.  They did this for a few centuries, while they started emigrating to the far parts of the pacific ocean, to as far south east to Rapa Nui (Easter Island), to the south west to Aotearoa (New Zealand) and north as far as the Hawaiian islands.  These three points define the Polynesian triangle and for the most part islands within these zones are known to be Polynesian.

Around 1200 A.D. is when migration ceased among these groups.  It would not be until about 500 years later when Europeans would travel within the Pacific, people such as Captain Cook who noticed that as far and isolated these islands are, that the people had similar cultures and languages.  DNA confirms that.  When Captain Cook arrived in the Hawaiian islands in 1778, he estimated a population of 300,000.  Other historians say that he under-estimated the number of Hawaiians based on what he could see from his ship, and did not take into consideration the inhabitants inland.  So they say it was about 800,000 to one million Hawaiians in 1778.  The 1890 Hawaiian Kingdom Census counted 40,622 aboriginal Hawaiians.  The 2000 US census counted about 460,000 Native Hawaiians.  The current Hawaiian population came out of the 40,000 Hawaiians from 1890, which was the last bottle neck occurrence.

Now that Polynesians are getting DNA tested, we come up as 1st, 2nd or 3rd cousins for the most part, usually sharing more than 50cM, sometimes as high as 500cM and with multiple segments, which they say is consistent with an endogamous group.  In particular are the high shared percentages among Maoris of New Zealand and Kanaka (Maoli) of Hawai’i.  But given the history of migration it is understandable why eastern Polynesians would be much more genetically similar to each other compared to the older, western Polynesians.  As Polynesians migrated further east, they became genetically closer.