DNA study links Hawaii’s first settlers to Easter Island seafarers
A study published in Science found that Native Hawaiians share the closest genetic relationship with people from Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island. The researchers say the evidence points to seafarers from Rapa Nui reaching Hawaii in the 1200s, extending a Polynesian settlement route previously traced only as far as Rapa Nui.
Bottom line — In 61% of reconstructed family trees, Hawaii and Rapa Nui were paired together.
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The team analysed DNA from more than 1,000 Polynesian people, including 317 Native Hawaiians, 12 people from Rapa Nui and eight from Mangareva.
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Mangarevan ancestry was the second-largest Polynesian ancestry component among Native Hawaiians, according to the study.
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The researchers estimate that about 800 people founded Tahiti around 1070; this estimate covers a generation of people of reproductive age, not children or elders.
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The study links repeated founder effects—the loss of genetic diversity when small groups establish new populations—to elevated frequencies of some disease-associated variants in Eastern Polynesia.
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SciTechDaily reports carrier rates of 2% to 3% for three variants linked to eye or kidney conditions among the Eastern Polynesians studied.
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SciTechDaily says the researchers found that founder effects in Eastern Polynesians were more than ten times larger than in the European-descent populations they had studied.