By Ahmed Abdelsalam
Researchers have solved a long-standing mystery about the origins of Native Hawaiians, tracing their ancestry to a 4,350-mile voyage from Easter Island, known natively as Rapa Nui.
4,350-mile journey from Easter Island
A new study from Stanford Medicine and collaborators analyzed the genomes of modern Polynesians and found that the first settlers of Hawaii departed from Easter Island around the 13th century. The seafarers likely stocked catamarans with sweet potatoes and bananas for the journey and for planting upon arrival.
Genetic bottlenecks reveal health implications
The research also uncovered profound implications for the health of Native Hawaiians. The population exhibits a strong founder effect — a genetic bottleneck that occurs when a small group establishes a new population — amplifying rare genetic variants linked to disease risks. Alexander Ioannidis, co-senior author of the study, said the founder effects among Native Hawaiians are more than ten times larger than those observed in European populations.
Earlier research traced Polynesian settlement
Previous work by the same team had mapped the settlement of Polynesia from Samoa through Fiji, Tonga, the Cook Islands, the Society Islands, and Mangareva to Easter Island around 1210. The new findings indicate that the longest leg of this migration was the final stretch to Hawaii, intensifying the series of genetic bottlenecks.
