Akar Nusa
On a ferry from Sumatra to Java, a trader chats with a Javanese student. On the deck, a fisherman from Sulawesi mends a net. The distance between them is small. The history behind them is vast.
The story
Indonesia has between 13,000 and 17,000 islands. It is one of the largest island countries in the world, and it sits right next to Malaysia. Its people speak more than 700 languages and belong to hundreds of ethnic groups; a 2015 study put the number at around 600. Most languages belong to the Austronesian family, whose speakers moved south from Taiwan from the third millennium BCE. In the east, Papuan languages are also spoken.
The great sea routes made the islands a crossroads. Srivijaya, a trading kingdom of Sumatra, rose in the late 7th century. Islamic states appeared in northern Sumatra from the late 13th century. The Spice Islands of Maluku, famous for nutmeg, mace and cloves that grew nowhere else, drew traders and then European powers from the 16th century. The Dutch took control of most of the archipelago by the early 20th century.
DNA shows the same layered story. A large study by Tumonggor and colleagues looked at the DNA of 2,740 people from 70 communities across 12 islands. It traced about 50,000 years of movement. It found that later contacts with Chinese, Indians, Arabs and Europeans left a mark in men's Y chromosomes, but not in mothers' mitochondrial DNA. In other words, those later arrivals were mostly men. The study also found that in earlier times women moved more widely than men.
A second study found a sharp split in men's lines, east against west, with the border running between Bali and Flores. Eastern lines are close to those of Melanesia. Most western lines, including O-M119, go back to old arrivals from mainland Asia.
Indonesia is also close to home in people. The Javanese are the largest ethnic group, about 41 percent of Indonesians, and Javanese allies and settlers appear in several Malaysian stories on this site, such as the capture of Melaka in 1641. The genetic picture of Indonesia is therefore a useful guide to many Malaysian family trees.
Where you can still see it today
- Hundreds of living languages across the islands.
- The Spice Islands of Maluku, still known for their nutmeg and cloves.
- Minangkabau and Bugis families in Malaysia, told in other stories on this site.
- Two sister languages. Malay and Indonesian diverged after the 1824 border.
What DNA can tell, and what it cannot
For Malaysians, Indonesia is part of the family tree. Many Malaysian families have roots in Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi and beyond. A region estimate can show a Southeast Asian island base that is shared across the border. A father line such as O-M119 is one of the common old lines in the west of the archipelago.
DNA cannot tell exactly which island a family came from, and it does not decide race, religion or bumiputera status.
