Indigenous people of New Guinea

Indonesia

Papua New Guinea

Haplogroups

The majority of Papuan Y-DNA Haplogroups belong to subclades of Haplogroup MS, and Haplogroup C1b2a. The frequency of each haplogroup varies along geographic clines.^[14][15]

Autosomal DNA

The genetic makeup of Papuans is primarily derived from Ancient East Eurasians, which relates them to other mainland Asian groups such as the "AASI", Andamanese, as well as East/Southeast Asians, although Papuans may have also received some gene flow from an earlier group (xOoA), around 2%,^[16] next to additional archaic Denisovan admixture in the Sahul region. Papuans may habor varying degrees of deep admixture from "a lineage basal to West and East-Eurasians which occurred sometimes between 45 and 38kya", although they are generally regarded "as a simple sister group of Tianyuan" ("Basal East Asians").^[11][12][10]

There is evidence that the ancestors of Papuans and related groups "underwent a strong bottleneck before the settlement of the region, and separated around 20,000–40,000 years ago".^[17]

Papuans display pronounced genetic diversity, explained through isolation and drift between different subgroups after the settlement of New Guinea. The most notable differentiation was found to be between Highlanders and Lowlanders. Papuan Highlanders fall into three clusters, but form a single clade compared against Lowlanders. The Highlanders underwent a population bottleneck around 10,000 years ago, associated with the adoption of Neolithic lifestyles. Papuan Lowlanders display increased diversity and can be broadly differentiated into a Southern Lowlander cluster and a Northern Lowlander cluster. The genetic differentiation among Papuans is suggested to date back at least 20kya, while the sub-structure among Highlanders dates back around 10kya, with higher diversity among western Highlanders than Eastern ones. The genetic diversity is paralleled by linguistic and cultural diversity.^[18]

Archaic introgression

Based on his genetic studies of the Denisova hominin, an ancient human species discovered in 2010, Svante Pääbo claims that ancient human ancestors of the Papuans interbred in Asia with these humans. He has found that people of New Guinea share 4%–7% of their genome with the Denisovans, indicating this exchange.^[19] Denisovan introgressions may have influenced the immune system of present-day Papuans and potentially favoured "variants to immune-related phenotypes" and "adaptation to the local environment".^[20]

ASPM gene

In a 2005 study of ASPM gene variants, Mekel-Bobrov et al. found that the Papuan people have among the highest rate of the newly evolved ASPM Haplogroup D, at 59.4% occurrence of the approximately 6,000-year-old allele.^[21] While it is not yet known exactly what selective advantage is provided by this gene variant, the haplogroup D allele is thought to be positively selected in populations and to confer some substantial advantage that has caused its frequency to rapidly increase.