The Pigs of Island Southeast Asia and the Pacific: New Evidence for Taxonomic Status and Human-Mediated Dispersal

Abstract

This paper undertakes a major survey of the genus Sus from Island Southeast Asia and specifically attempts to re-examine the taxonomic status of the pigs of Wallacea, in order to re-evaluate the complex evidence for human mediated dispersal. This was undertaken using the combined approach of tooth outline and mitochondrial DNA analysis. The data provide clear evidence for three dispersal events: The first involved domesticated pigs, originating from wild Sus scrofa stock in mainland Southeast Asia, being introduced to the Greater and Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Mollucas, New Guinea, and Oceania. Archaeological specimens clearly link these pigs with the Lapita and subsequent Polynesian dispersals. Since the pigs on New Guinea are specifically linked with this dispersal, it follows that the current wild populations of the island must be the feral descendants of introduced domestic pigs from mainland Southeast Asia, which came into New Guinea via the Lesser Sunda Islands. A second dispersal event also involved domesticated pigs (this time from wild Sus scrofa populations from mainland East Asia), introduced to the Philippines and Micronesia, while a third involved the endemic warty pig of Sulawesi (Sus celebensis), which data from Liang Bua cave shows was introduced to Flores perhaps as early as 7000 B.C.

The Western Route Migration: A Second Probable Neolithic Diffusion to Indonesia

“…The results of several studies suggest that the early domesticated pigs and chickens originated in MSEA before being introduced to ISEA as part of a Neolithic dispersal (Dobney et al 2008). For example, ancient and modern DNA studies have demonstrated that a unique haplotype in Sus scrofa known as the 'Pacific Clade' appears to have its origins in Yunnan Province, China, and/or northern Vietnam and Laos where wild progenitors of this genetic lineage have been identified (Dobney et al 2008;Larson et al 2010). Translocation of this haplotype can be traced south through Vietnam, probably as part of the Austroasiatic human movements around 4000 BP (see Piper, Chapter 15, this volume).…”

Evaluating the roles of directed breeding and gene flow in animal domestication

“…Here, mtDNA from both ancient and modern S. scrofa show that most contemporary Chinese lineages were never incorporated into domestic herds, nor exterminated as a result of hunting or introgression with feral pigs (51), suggesting control (even penning) of pigs from an early stage in the domestication process. Early agriculturalists moving into southeastern Asia deliberately or accidentally recruited local wild boar lineages into their domestic stock, with the result that ancient mainland and island southeastern Asian, New Guinea, and remote Oceanic domestic pigs share their maternal ancestry with lineages recruited from southeastern Asian wild boar populations (49,(52)(53)(54), and not with the earliest central Chinese domestic pigs. However, neutral markers, such as mtDNA, can themselves be rapidly replaced during the hybridization process between incoming domestic and local wild stock (53).…”

Distinguishing Wild Boar from Domestic Pigs in Prehistory: A Review of Approaches and Recent Results

“…The Vikings took pigs to the Faroe Islands and Iceland in the North Atlantic as part of a full agricultural package, attested both archaeologically and historically (Church et al 2005). Domestic pigs were part of Neolithic economies taken to the Philippines (Piper et al 2009), and beyond the Wallace Line into Island Southeast Asia and on into the Pacific (Dobney et al 2008); and to the East Mediterranean islands of Cyprus (Davis 2003;Vigne et al 2011), and Crete (Isaakidou 2008). There is no reason to doubt that these introduced animals were fully domestic-even though feral populations became established in Crete and New Guinea, and even though fallow deer were introduced to Cyprus at an early time to form a wild population for hunting.…”

“…The first pigs in Hawaii were thus the domestic descendants of Vietnamese wild boar. The other later movement was of pigs from eastern China to Taiwan, the Philippines, and the Mariana Islands (Larson, Cucchi et al 2007;Dobney, Cucchi and Larson 2008;Cucchi et al 2009). The date of the last one is at least as early as 4,000 years ago, since domestic pigs occur in the Philippines at this time (Piper et al 2009).…”