A landmark study revealed the complex shared origins, inter-relatedness, and genetic diversity of the Filipino people.
Taking advantage of the latest advances in genomics and computational biology, a team of researchers investigated into the Filipino’s DNA and looked into 2.3 million molecular DNA markers that were known to differ between various populations.
Markers from more than 1,000 individuals representing 115 Philippine cultural communities were comprehensively analyzed.
“This finally gives us a clearer picture of who we are as Filipinos, where we came from, and our sense of relatedness,” said Carlo Ebeo, Board of Trustee member of the National Museum who was involved in the study.
It was revealed that through time, the Philippines was inhabited by at least five major waves of human migration: starting with Northern and Southern Negritos as the first Filipinos, then followed by Manobo, Sama, and Cordilleran-related populations.
The latter three major waves happened around 15 to 7 thousand years ago, coinciding with the major geographic changes in the region that was brought about by climate change. These include the inundation of the Sunda landmass as well as the loss of land bridge between Taiwan and southern China.
It was previously thought that the search for new arable lands by expanding farmer populations was the main reason for driving population migrations, such as the dispersal of Austronesian-speaking groups into the Philippines.
However, Dr. Maximilian Larena, a Filipino scientist based in Sweden who co-led the study, challenged this view.
“Our findings suggest that instead of farming, climate change may have played a more important role in driving the mass movement of populations in various directions,” he said.
The significant geographic changes may have prompted the migration of Manobo and Sama-related ancestral groups from Borneo into southern Philippines and Cordilleran-related ancestral groups from southern China-Taiwan area into the various islands of the Philippines.
The arrival of Manobo, Sama, and Cordilleran-related groups resulted in interbreeding with resident Negritos.
Interestingly, some Cordillerans remained to be the only ethnic group in the Philippines who did not show evidence of historical interbreeding with Negritos; and consequently are the only population in the world who remained to be the unadmixed (not comparable) descendants of Basal East Asians.
According to Dr. Adrian Albano, a Kalanguya Cordilleran from Ifugao State University and co-author of the study: “This affirms that Cordillerans were isolated for quite some time, which is evident on the retention of distinct indigenous cultural practices and presence of immense linguistic diversity in the region.”
Additional minor genetic signals were also detected in some Filipino ethnic groups, including Papuan, South Asian, and European genetic ancestry.
The Papuan-related ancestry is found among the coastal ethnic groups of southeastern Philippines. This likely reflects a westward migration or gene flow of Papuan-related ancestry from Papua New Guinea or the Bismarck’s archipelago into eastern Indonesia and subsequently into southeastern Philippines.
The South Asian or Indian-related genetic signal was detected among the Sama Dilaut and other coastal Sama ethnic groups of southwestern Philippines.
“This is a groundbreaking study that the commission heartily endorsed, and we should be thankful for this collaboration as it sheds some light on the longstanding question of our origins. It will certainly revise our understanding and appreciate that the story of the peopling of the Philippines from three waves of migration as proposed by Otley Beyer is not supported by archeological, genetic, or historical evidence,” said former NCCA chairman Felipe Mendoza de Leon.