Talk:Australo-Melanesian

POV maps

File:Negrito ancestry distribution.png

File:Sub Saharan African related (Negroid) ancestry.png

@Joshua Jonathan: & @Doug Weller: - This User:LenguaMapa on wikicommons (does not seem to have wikipedia account?) has been adding unreliable/unsourced maps like these on several pages. Claiming Oceanians are Africans and not East Eurasians.

He guesstimates "Negrito" (onge) ancestry in South Asians and also associates it with Sub Shaharan African ancestry. Here is link to Negrito map talk page and Sub Sahaharan related map talk page. I have pointed how (McColl et al. 2018) models East Asians as roughly 75% Onge (Andamanese)-related and 25% Tianyuan-related (fig.3) where Onge is capturing deep proxy ancestry. Similarly, Onge is also capturing deep proxy for hypothesized AASI ancestry which is poor fit for AASI as several studies have pointed out.

I cited various peer-reviewed studies from reich and haravrd groups, pointed out Negrito and Australians descend from East Eurasian clad along with East Asians, however he won't seem to get it.

"New Guinea and Australia fit well as sister groups, with their majority ancestry component forming a clade with East Asians (with respect to western Eurasians). Onge fit as a near-trifurcation with the Australasian and East Asian lineages" - Lipson et al. 2017

"Deep ancestry of the indigenous hunter-gather population of India represents an anciently divergent branch of Asian human variation that split off around the same time that East Asian, Onge and Australian aboriginal ancestors separated from each other." He also notes that East Eurasian clad spread "From a single eastward spread, which gave rise in a short span of time to the lineages leading to AASI, East Asians, Onge, and Australians" - Narashimhan et al. 2018

"If one of these population fits (for AASI), it does not mean it is the true source; instead, it means that it and the true source population are consistent with descending without mixture from the same homogeneous ancestral population that potentially lived thousands of years before. The only fitting two-way models were mixtures of a group related to herders from the western Zagros mountains of Iran and also to either Andamanese hunter-gatherers or East Siberian hunter-gatherers (the fact that the latter two populations both fit reflects that they have the same phylogenetic relationship to the non-West Eurasian-related component likely due to shared ancestry deeply in time)" Shinde et al. 2019

While he cites Non-peer reviewed Yuan et al. 2019 study, which has not been peer-reviewed for months. Which came out last year claiming Oceanians are mix of European/Indian and African/Archic ancestry, and not Asians. It claims that modern humans originated in hunan province of China, and that they found Chinese ancestry in Africans (recent Shum Lake paper didn't mention this part lol). There was discussion about this on Anthorogenica post 1 explains why & post 2. It is telling why the study was not peer-reviewed.

Reliable peer-reviewed ancient DNA study suggests otherwise, this Figure 4 from (McColl et al. 2018) based on ancient DNA will help understand East Eurasian clad and it's branching, along with this Lipson et al 2018 study.

Those two maps is pretty misleading, one of them is on several pages. He is guesstimating "negrito" ancestry based on Onge proxy ancestry found in mainland Asians and also associating it with Saharan/African ancestry, when in reality Negritos branched from East Eurasian clad and share deep ancestry with all East Eurasians. Ilber8000 (talk) 20:33, 13 March 2020 (UTC) I have removed them for now.Ilber8000 (talk) 23:04, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

See my answer at Talk:Negroid#Map_from_the_Horniman_museum_is_correct Rsk6400 (talk) 18:41, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Map from the Horniman museum is correct

Dear user: Rsk6400 ! Why do you call the map outdated? The Caucasian , Mongoloid, Negroid and Australoid groups of races exist accoriding to the genetic distances of various ethnic groups based on autosomal genetic researches.--Liltender (talk) 17:28, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

The issue (for me) is not whether those groups exist. For other reasons, I don't believe the map is entirely correct. For instance: It seems to show/color code New Zealand (i.e. the Maori) as "Australoid", when as Polynesians they would be classified as (mostly) "Mongoloid". Also, it shows/codes the Indian subcontinent as entirely "Caucasoid", when in fact the people of that region are, to varying degrees, a mixture of "Caucasoid"/Western Eurasian and a non-Caucasoid/non-Western Eurasian population (labelled by recent genetic studies as "ASI" or more recently as "AASI") that is distantly related to "Australoids" and to the Andamanese. In adition, people from the Horn of Africa are generally mixed as well ("Caucasian" and sub-Saharan African) and not fully Caucasian as the map incorrectly indicates. It seems to me User:Rsk6400 was correct to remove it. Skllagyook (talk) 17:36, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Please see my reply at Talk:Negroid#Map_from_the_Horniman_museum_is_correct Rsk6400 (talk) 18:47, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

The article is about a historical race concept

A clearly defined "Australo-Melanesian" or "Australoid" race or population doesn't exist in modern science (biology or genetics). So I changed the lede and some parts of the article in order to clarify that we are dealing with a historical race concept. --Rsk6400 (talk) 06:01, 19 July 2020 (UTC)

@Rsk6400: I agree that it's not a "clearly defined race". However, reliable sources still make reference to an "Australo-Melanesian" genetic grouping (e.g. from this 2015 article: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.349.6246.354 and this 2021 article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03823-6). I suggest that we make the distinction between the historical race concept and the contemporary genetic grouping. --Pakbelang (talk) 02:44, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

A source that just proves that some scientist has used the term in some paper is a primary source for the usage of the term, see WP:PSTS. At least in the nature source (Morphological characters indicate that this Toalean forager was a 17–18-year-old female with a broadly Australo-Melanesian affinity), I see no indication that it is a "genetic grouping". It may just mean "looks like somebody from Australia or Melanesia". --Rsk6400 (talk) 10:13, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Rsk6400: Okay on both points (PSTS and phenotype rather than genotype). Here are a couple of secondary sources that use the term "Australo-Melanesian" to refer to a genetic grouping (based on the 2015 Science article): https://www.courthousenews.com/early-north-americans-likely-more-diverse-than-previously-thought/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/07/studies-find-genetic-signature-of-native-australians-in-the-americas/ --Pakbelang (talk) 10:25, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Degeneration1: Please don't mark potentially controversial edits as "minor", see WP:ME. You might also want to read WP:BRD. The American Association of Physical Anthropologists is a respected international body of scientists, so their declarations not opinions, but science. --Rsk6400 (talk) 05:28, 8 August 2021 (UTC)

No, this not a genetic grouping, but a cover term for the ancestral component of the diverse indigenous populations of SE Asia and Oceania. The genomes of many of these peoples still overwhelmingly comprise this ancestry component, but many also to various degrees display multiple geneflow from later East Asian migrations, so there no support from genetics that there is a clearcut "genetic grouping" of "Australo-Melanesians". What I support is to mention that the term "Australo-Melanesian" is used in genetics for this complex ancestral component, but a detailed discussion belongs in articles that discuss the peopling and genetic history of SE Asia and Oceania. A real secondary source (and not just a pop-sci news report quoting a primary source) for the current use in genetics is e.g. this one[1] by Skoglund & Mathieson (2018). –Austronesier (talk) 13:32, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks. I found a few additional sources for the current use of the term "Australo-Melanesians" in genetics:[2] Buckley and Oxenham (2015), [3] Bulbeck et al. (2017), and [4] Carson (2018). Pakbelang (talk) 15:00, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, but still we need to strictly separate between obsolete pseudoscience (i.e. the racial category "Australo-Melanesian") and hard science (i.e. the books and papers you bring up here about the loose cover term for that can mean different things in different contexts). Blurring the line between these two by covering both in one article is not helpful for our readers. –Austronesier (talk) 15:12, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

I suggest to add a brief section "Other uses of the term" or similar, where we can add scholarly sources from archaeology, genetics etc. And FWIW @Rsk6400: unlike all the "-oid" terms, "Australo-Melanesian" doesn't have the reek of pseudoscience. E.g. for Peter Bellwood and colleagues, the term has been a useful cover term for the hunter-gatherer groups that inhabited (and still inhabit in remnant areas) SE Asia before the Austronesian, Austrasiatic and Tai expansions. –Austronesier (talk) 15:51, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Yes, Austronesier I support this suggestion —Pakbelang (talk) 15:54, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

No problem with that. Only, it should be based on good secondary sources, and those sources should say explicitly something like "We use the term Australo-Melanesian to describe ..." or similar. --Rsk6400 (talk) 16:52, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Sure, attestation alone is not sufficient for verification. I'll see what I can dig up. –Austronesier (talk) 22:33, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

This recent source claims that "Australo-Papuan" is a better term [5] —Pakbelang (talk) 01:39, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

'Australo-Papuan' is the valid modern term used in most genetics studies on these peoples as of 2022. 'Oceanian' is also increasingly used. 'Australo-Melanesian', however, is also still used in some studies This article should reflect this, and refer to these which are in widespread academic use, as well as mention the other now outdated terms as already in place in the article. 'Australo-Papuan' is a valid and clearly defined 'racial' or biological category (subpopulation, ecotype, biogeographic ancestry or subspecies all overlap with one another) of diverse, yet related, human groups indigenous to New Guinea, Australia and nearby islands. But it is a genetic category that is clearly distinguished from the highly diverse Negrito subgroups of mainland southeast Asia and the Philippines. The content about the discussion over the use of the term 'race' here is also irrelevant to the article. That is covered in other articles. This article is specifically about a valid subcategory of human biogeographic ancestry common to the indigenous peoples of New Guinea and nearby islands, Australian Aborigines and other Melanesians. 69.156.38.113 (talk) 09:33, 22 August 2022 (UTC) [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] 69.156.38.113 (talk) 09:50, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

The terms ecotype, subpopulation, subspecies are not applicable to humans. See any reliable source published in this millenium, see any discussion on relevant talk pages. The next time you revert, I'll take the case to WP:ANI/3RR. Rsk6400 (talk) 09:48, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

What are you talking about? All of those are applicable and used in modern humans. Clearly you have not read any reliable source published in this millennium from the expert on the topic. All three are used by experts. Most use subpopulation. Alan Templeton uses subpopulation, but also makes not that subspecies can even be used depending on context. Others, like David Reich, use ecotypes. Michel Tibayrenc uses all of them (read: [13]), and clearly defines how any can be applied to modern humans and to biological race. It's an ongoing discussion among experts. The genetic distances (Fst) between human subpopulations are greater than those between subpopulations and subspecies of tigers. Talk pages on Wiki are not expert sources, but they never hae resolved it either. 69.156.38.113 (talk) 09:55, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Feel free to seek dispute resolution. Rsk6400 (talk) 09:58, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

I will seek dispute resolution. This article is falsely claiming that terms like 'Australo-Papuan' and 'Australo-Melanesian' are not used in modern scientific studies to refer to a valid biological category or subpopulation of humans, when clearly they are. Practically every genetics study on them as of 2022 uses one of these terms. The current format of the article is misinformation. I just gave you 8 studies from 2020 to 2022 after one quick search on Google using the terms to refer to a genetic cluster and biological category. There are differences within it, just as there is within Early European Farmer, Western Hunter-Gatherer, Western Steppe Herder, Caucasus Hunter-Gatherer, Aeta, Negrito, Onge or Ancient North Eurasian, Ancient Beringian, Eastern Hunter-Gatherer, Scandinavian Hunter-Gatherer,as well as Denisovan, Neanderthal or other archaic hominin ancestry exclusive to certain modern human groups. 69.156.38.113 (talk) 10:12, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

No-one refers to these ancestral lineages and the present-day populations which predominantly display these ancestries in their genome as races. We have known for a long time that you are convinced that modern genetics research corroborates obsolete racial classifications. It doesn't, read the sources, period. –Austronesier (talk) 10:28, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

There is a case for renaming this article as "Australo-Papuan" or "Oceanian" (to refer to the human sub-population). The article can then make reference to the obsolete racial classifications (noting that the issues with the term 'race'). Pakbelang (talk) 20:09, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Is there any secondary (sic !), recent, scientific WP:RS about an Australo-Papuan or Oceanian human sub-population ? Rsk6400 (talk) 16:28, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

Yes, see Bellwood (2017) First Islanders: Prehistory and Human Migration in Island Southeast Asia: "The term "Australo-Papuan" is often rendered "Australo-Melanesian" in other publications, but I hesitate to use this term since the islands of Melanesia ... have witnessed lots of population admixture"−Pakbelang (talk) 20:20, 24 August 2022 (UTC)

The quote doesn't answer my question. Also: In this very thread, there are some very good remarks by Austronesier. And: I saw your revert of yesterday as disruptive. Rsk6400 (talk) 06:14, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

The answer to your question is, 'Yes.' Bellwood (2017) is a recent, scientific reliable source about an 'Australo-Papuan' human sub-population. Isn't that precisely your question? Pakbelang (talk) 21:58, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Australo-Melanesian, Australo-Papuan and Australasian in modern secondary sources about genetic research

The terms "Australo-Papuan" and "Australasian" are often used in studies about the history of uniparental genetic markers and the full genome ("Australo-Melanesian" only rarely). The claim is that this research corroborates (or at least partially relates to) obsolete racial classifications as covered in this article. While modern geneticists simply to do not talk about "race" in their output (which actually should already be sufficient to put rac(ial)ist pipe dreams to rest), the claim circles around the notion of "sub-populations" in a taxonomic sense which some people wilfully read into genetic research articles.

So let's have a look what the few relevant secondary review/overview articles have to say about "Australo-Melanesian" etc.:

There are two studies with a global scope:

• Skoglund & Mathieson (2018), "Ancient Genomics of Modern Humans: The First Decade", Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 19:381–404.
• Liu et al. (2021), "Insights into human history from the first decade of ancient human genomics", Science 373:1479–1484.

And one more specifically about Asia and Oceania:

• Yang (2022), "A genetic history of migration, diversification, and admixture in Asia", Human Population Genetics and Genomics 2(1):0001.

Here are the relevant passages:

1) Skoglund & Mathieson (2018). There is a passing mention of "Australo-Melanesians" on pp. 391–392: However, a genetic affinity between Amazonian and Australo-Melanesian populations suggests that we still do not have the full picture of the ancestry of the first Americans (102, 129). This suggests that the expansion into the Americas was substructured, with some subpopulations retaining greater affinity to an unknown northeastern Asian population related to present-day Australo-Melanesians. The authors to not define "Australo-Melanesians" in their article, but from the quote and the context it should be clear that they are not talking about sharply well-delineated taxonomic entities, but rather geographical clusters of various present-day populations which predominantly display a specific ancestry.

2) Liu et al. (2021). No mention of "Australo-Papuan" etc. at all. They open the relevant section "Oceania" with the following sentence: Archeological evidence suggests that human populations from Southeast Asia have initially settled in Sahul (present-day Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea) before ~50 ka. They continue to discuss Aborignal Australians and Papuans individually.

3) Yang (2022). This is a great source since the author defines the term "Australasian": Australasian (AA) lineage—this lineage refers to the ancestral population that primarily contributed to human populations in Australasia, or the region consisting of Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring islands in the South Pacific Ocean. Represented primarily by present-day Australasians, e.g. Papuans and Aboriginal Australians (p. 8). NB that this an ancestry component that emerges in the modeling in the genetic history of modern-day populations, and is found among them to various degrees. But there is no taxonomic "Australasian" group, sub-population etc. of present-day populations! When applied to modern people, "Australasians" simply refers to the inhabitants of Australasia (the region consisting of Australia, New Zealand, and neighboring South Pacific islands) (p. 4).

Clearly, there is no link between obsolete classificatory "races" and the modern concept of ancestries. There is some crude overlap since the human genome also determines the phenotypical characteristics that were exploited by earlier racial classification. But to combine these two completely different paradigms is like mixing up the Aether theory with Quantum electrodynamics. We can talk about "Australasian" ancestry in an article about the Peopling of Oceania, but not here.

A final word on Bellwood's book (even if he is an archaeologist and his book mostly a primary source for his model about the demic spread of the Neolithic from East Asia into Southeast Asia and Oceania): Bellwood primarily uses the term "Australo-Papuan" (actually "Australo-Melanesians" during most of his career) for the diverse inhabitants of Southeast Asia and Oceania prior to the expansion of people from East Asia into that area that began ~4kya. He also goes into saying things like The modern Australo‐Papuan populations of Island Southeast Asia still form a coherent biological subdivision in terms of their DNA and phenotypic features. This is however simply at odds with modern genetic research, and also with a statement by Bellwood himself in the same paragraph: However, many of the peoples of eastern Indonesia, especially in eastern Nusa Tenggara and of course in Papua itself, are today predominately Australo‐Papuan in genetic heritage. Australasian ancestry forms a cline in Wallacea (=eastern Indonesia), and there is no sensible cut-off point. This is of course true for most regions in the world, and the primary reason why modern geneticists consider the idea of races meritless. –Austronesier (talk) 12:50, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

–Austronesier (talk) 12:50, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

Requested move 25 August 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) – robertsky (talk) 03:22, 2 September 2022 (UTC)

---

Australo-Melanesian → Australo-papuan – Recent publications (summarised by Bellwood (2017) use this term in preference over "Australo-Melanesian". Pakbelang (talk) 22:09, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

Example of recent, reliable secondary source using the term "Australo-papuan": https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/The_Philippines/JmCpDwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=australo-papuan+people&pg=PA15&printsec=frontcover Pakbelang (talk) 23:08, 25 August 2022 (UTC)

• comment- Please could the nom. provide some rationale for this move. I note the talk section where one source is found with the alternative designation, but that doesn't fit with the article content as it stands, and is hardly a consensus of sources demanding a change. I am not sure what I am missing here, but before I make my !vote I would like to understand why the new name would apparently be better. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 07:52, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

  In the review by Bellwood (2017), the term Australo-papuan is used (43 times) in preference of the term Australo-melanesian (5 times). The author comments that: "The term "Australo-Papuan" is often rendered "Australo-Melanesian" in other publications, but I hesitate to use this term since the islands of Melanesia ... have witnessed lots of population admixture." Pakbelang (talk) 08:00, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

  When you say “review” and usage counts, I assume you mean a systematic review of the literature, but Bellwood is actually a text book. Are these numbers just the author’s preference? Or has he conducted a systematic review? I don’t see any evidence for the latter but I don’t have the book, so please let me know if he does discuss that.

  As for the reason for his hesitation - if your quote is accurate, I find that slightly disturbing considering what this page is currently about. The suggestion that the group should be defined by a genetic purity makes it look like the intent is to argue contrary to this articles first line in the lead which says: Australo-Melanesians …. is an outdated historical grouping of various people indigenous to Melanesia and Australia. If you change the name you have to change the article. Now I note User:Austronesier’s comments about there being two conflated concepts here, but I do not understand your rationale of how this solution will help with that. Is your intention to then create a new article under this name? How would this article need to be rewritten under the new name? This all seems very nebulous to me, sorry. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 08:51, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

• comment Do you really want to move to "Australo-papuan" or is it "Australo-Papuan" ? Rsk6400 (talk) 08:10, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
• oppose the page move. Per discussion above, I do not think the nom. has provided a good rationale for page move, and any such move would require rewriting the article. Essentially it proposes a move to make the page about something else completely. That is not a move, that is a back door deletion. I am also concerned about the proposed direction the new content would take. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 11:23, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose This is comparing apples with oranges. "Australo-Papuan" in modern genetic research ≠ "Australo-Melanesian" as an obsolete racial category. I have gone into this in some detail in the preceding section above. –Austronesier (talk) 12:53, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose It is the traditional name for the "racial" (obsolete) category. Albeit obsolete (regarding the term "race"), the name Australo-Melanesian traditionally covers a group of dark-skinned indigenous peoples from Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania (Melanesia), covering Aboriginal Australians, Papuans and MELANESIANS. Scheridon (talk) 18:13, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose For the reasons already given above, especially Austronesier's clarification in the preceding section. Rsk6400 (talk) 18:55, 26 August 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

References

Dolichocephaly and similar pseudo-science

@Ekdalian and AngelusVastator3456: The IP was right in removing the newly added stuff about dolichocephalic people. While in the times of Huxley, the cephalic index could be regarded as scientific, in 2019 any attempts to draw conclusions about human ancestries without genome analysis are futile at best, probably pseudo-scientific. Anyway, a study is a primary source, we cannot gauge its relevance without secondary sources. Rsk6400 (talk) 14:07, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Just to bring some badly needed nuance into this discussion. Craniometrics is not pseudo-science. Sure, multiple studies have shown that populations which are genomically close can develop diverse cranial and skeletal types due to enviromental and nutritional factors, which casts legitimate doubts on the reliablity of craniometrics. Thus, in the absence of genomic data, it has become downgraded to a not fully reliable "second-best" way to draw conclusions about ancestral relations between ancient and modern populations. But in a climatic area were ancient genomic data is extremely hard to retrieve (as of now, we only have three(!) ancient pre-Neolithic genomes for the entire area of SE Asia + Oceania), cranial and skeletal measurements can still provide some preliminary and helpful insights.

Matsumura is a leading expert in this field, and several of the co-authors of this widely-cited study are respectable archeaologists (Hung, Higham, Simandjuntak) who clearly do not engage in the pseudo-science of taxonimizing ancient and modern humans into "races", but rather use craniometric data as one piece of evidence to understand the dynamics of the peopling of eastern Eurasia. And that's the very reason why this paper does not belong as a source in this article, which is about an obsolete pseudo-scientific classification. –Austronesier (talk) 10:05, 5 November 2024 (UTC)