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. 2017 Aug;25(8):1004-1010.
doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2017.88. Epub 2017 May 17.

The last sea nomads of the Indonesian archipelago: genomic origins and dispersal

Pradiptajati Kusuma  1   2 , Nicolas Brucato  1 , Murray P Cox  3 , Thierry Letellier  1 , Abdul Manan  4 , Chandra Nuraini  5 , Philippe Grangé  5 , Herawati Sudoyo  2   6 , François-Xavier Ricaut  1
Affiliations

The last sea nomads of the Indonesian archipelago: genomic origins and dispersal

Pradiptajati Kusuma et al. Eur J Hum Genet. 2017 Aug.

Abstract

The Bajo, the world's largest remaining sea nomad group, are scattered across hundreds of recently settled communities in Island Southeast Asia, along the coasts of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines. With a significant role in historical trading, the Bajo lived until recently as nomads, spending their entire lives on houseboats while moving long distances to fish and trade. Along the routes they traveled, the Bajo settled and intermarried with local land-based groups, leading to 'maritime creolization', a process whereby Bajo communities retained their culture, but assimilated - and frequently married into - local groups. The origins of the Bajo have remained unclear despite several hypotheses from oral tradition, culture and language, all currently without supporting genetic evidence. Here, we report genome-wide SNP analyses on 73 Bajo individuals from three communities across Indonesia - the Derawan of Northeast Borneo, the Kotabaru of Southeast Borneo and the Kendari of Southeast Sulawesi, with 87 new samples from three populations surrounding the area where these Bajo peoples live. The Bajo likely share a common connection with Southern Sulawesi, but crucially, each Bajo community also exhibits unique genetic contributions from neighboring populations.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Map showing the distribution of Bajo communities across Island Southeast Asia (yellow), together with the location of sampled Bajo villages (red dots) and sampled historically related communities (blue dots).
Figure 2
Figure 2
PCAs of the three Bajo communities (Kendari, blue; Kotabaru, green; Derawan, red) based on 645,385 SNPs, showing independent clustering and limited overlap between individuals from different Bajo communities.
Figure 3
Figure 3
ADMIXTURE plot at K=10 depicting admixture of ancestral components in Derawan, Kotabaru and Kendari Bajo (red boxes), composed of East Asian, Austronesian, Papuan and minor Indian components.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Admixture history of the three Bajo communities inferred with GLOBETROTTER. (a) Admixture of Bugis (South Sulawesi) with multiple populations, including Malay, Filipinos and Papuans, up to 1600 years ago (ya), contemporary to the admixture of pre-Bajo Kendari by Bugis and Papuans around 1750 ya (Supplementary Table S4). (b) The expansion of the Śrīvijaya empire to Southeast Borneo triggered the dispersal of Bajo language, culture and people in many directions, including Southern Sulawesi and the Kendari, who assimilated them into its society. (c) Southern Sulawesi populations subsequently migrated westward to Southeastern Borneo, forming the Kotabaru community by admixing with local Banjar populations, in addition to Indian influences through the reigning Malay empire around 925 ya. Northward migrations formed the Derawan community, which also admixed with local Malay and Filipino groups around 675 ya. The influence of Southern Sulawesi populations (dashed arrows) is observed in both the Kotabaru and Derawan Bajo. (d) Recent interactions between the three Bajo groups were maintained with different intensities (dashed lines).
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