Genetic origins and affiliations of ancient Liangdao individuals

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 1028 individuals representing 115 indigenous Philippine populations and genome-sequence data from two ~8000-year-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 years ago, prior to the arrival of paddy field rice agriculture in the Philippines ~2,500 years 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 years ago. Lastly, only a few lowlanders, accounting for < 1% of all individuals, presented with low level signal 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.