A predominantly indigenous paternal heritage for the Austronesian-speakingpeoples of insular Southeast Asia and Oceania

Modern humans reached Southeast Asia and Oceania in one of the first disper sals out of Africa. The resulting temporal overlap of modern and archaic hu mans-and the apparent morphological continuity between them-has led to clai ms of gene flow between Homo sapiens and H. erectus. Much more recently, an agricultural technology from mainland Asia spread into the region, possibl y in association with Austronesian languages. Using detailed genealogical s tudy of Y chromosome variation, we show that the majority of current Austro nesian speakers trace their paternal heritage to Pleistocene settlers in th e region, as opposed to more-recent agricultural immigrants. A fraction of the paternal heritage, however, appears to be associated with more-recent i mmigrants from northern populations. We also show that the northern Neolith ic component is very unevenly dispersed through the region, with a higher c ontribution in Southeast Asia and a nearly complete absence in Melanesia. C ontrary to claims of gene flow (under regional continuity) between H. erect us and H. sapiens, we found no ancestral Y chromosome lineages in a set of 1,209 samples. The finding excludes the possibility that early hominids con tributed significantly to the paternal heritage of the region.