Hugo Reyes-Centeno: "Genomic and Archaeological Insights on the Expansion of Austronesian Speakers into Island Southeast Asia"

ABSTRACT:

In this talk, I provide an overview of the natural history of our species, demonstrating how modern genomics aligns with the paleontological and archaeological records to show that the genealogy of all people today can be traced to foraging populations residing in Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago. I then focus on the peopling of Southeast Asia and the Pacific over the past five thousand years—a process that remains hotly contested amongst archaeologists, geneticists, and linguists. Some hypotheses consider a dispersal of Austronesian-speaking agriculturalists from mainland Asia to Island Southeast Asia via Taiwan; however, accumulating evidence suggests additional dispersal routes, the gradual and uneven adoption of agricultural practices, and dynamic linguistic exchange. I discuss how this “Austronesian problem” of competing dispersal models is being addressed with original archaeological, genetic, and linguistic data from the Philippines. Finally, I reflect on how this transdisciplinary project points to challenges and opportunities for reconstructing the human past across time and space.