Made In Taiwan

It's 3AM and I'm wide-awake, all packed, and awaiting my shuttle to SF airport so I can attend the Science Blogging Conference in North Carolina. I'm not excited at the moment, but I should be able to muster-up a passable imitation of excitement by the time I get to Atlanta before the next leg to Raleigh-Durham. It's way too early to think, let alone write something substantive. I plan to do a bunch of real-time blogging once I get there. But until I can land in a new time zone, I'll leave you with a very interesting report appearing in the current issue of Science that describes other humans in transit.

The expansion into, and colonization of, isolated islands throughout Oceania is almost unbelievable to comprehend. This region of the South Pacific was the last area of the world to be settled by people. Imagine crossing thousands of miles of uncharted ocean in open seacraft with no guarantee that land even existed at the other end of your journey. Just as puzzling as the drive behind human curiosity and exploration has been determining the ancestry of these earliest Polynesians. Compelling anthropological evidence suggested Polynesians could trace their origins to Melanesian cultures in Papua New Guinea. Other studies suggested different ancestry. Recent genetic analysis has offered the most definitive answer yet. A study led by anthropologist Jonathan S. Friedlaender of Temple University in Philadelphia indicates that Polynesians bear a much closer relationship to aboriginal inhabitants of Taiwan than to the Melanesian groups who occupied New Guinea and surrounding islands from 50,000 to 30,000 years ago.