Multiple migrations to the Philippines during the last 50,000 years

TLDR

Island Southeast Asia’s complex demography remains poorly understood despite recent surprising findings. We analyzed ~2.3 million genotypes from 1,028 individuals across 115 Philippine populations and sequenced two ~8,000‑year‑old individuals from Liangdao. Our results reveal at least five distinct migration waves into the Philippines—including Northern and Southern Negritos, Manobo, Sama, Papuan, and Cordilleran groups—showing Cordilleran ancestors diverged from Taiwanese indigenous peoples ~8,000 years ago, with minimal South Asian and West Eurasian admixture, thereby contradicting an exclusive out‑of‑Taiwan model.

Abstract

Island Southeast Asia has recently produced several surprises regarding human history, but the region's complex demography remains poorly understood. Here, we report ∼2.3 million genotypes from 1,028 individuals representing 115 indigenous Philippine populations and genome-sequence data from two ∼8,000-y-old individuals from Liangdao in the Taiwan Strait. We show that the Philippine islands were populated by at least five waves of human migration: initially by Northern and Southern Negritos (distantly related to Australian and Papuan groups), followed by Manobo, Sama, Papuan, and Cordilleran-related populations. The ancestors of Cordillerans diverged from indigenous peoples of Taiwan at least ∼8,000 y ago, prior to the arrival of paddy field rice agriculture in the Philippines ∼2,500 y ago, where some of their descendants remain to be the least admixed East Asian groups carrying an ancestry shared by all Austronesian-speaking populations. These observations contradict an exclusive "out-of-Taiwan" model of farming-language-people dispersal within the last four millennia for the Philippines and Island Southeast Asia. Sama-related ethnic groups of southwestern Philippines additionally experienced some minimal South Asian gene flow starting ∼1,000 y ago. Lastly, only a few lowlanders, accounting for <1% of all individuals, presented a low level of West Eurasian admixture, indicating a limited genetic legacy of Spanish colonization in the Philippines. Altogether, our findings reveal a multilayered history of the Philippines, which served as a crucial gateway for the movement of people that ultimately changed the genetic landscape of the Asia-Pacific region.