Extended Data Fig. 3: Continuity between ancient and modern Polynesian island populations.
From: Paths and timings of the peopling of Polynesia inferred from genomic networks
F3 statistics were computed between ancient Rapanui samples and the Polynesian component from modern samples from each island in our dataset (top)107. Indigenous Austronesian language speakers from Taiwan (the Atayal) were used as an outgroup. The ancient Rapanui were found to be the most similar genetically to the modern Rapanui, indicating genetic continuity. A similar comparison was performed between the only other ancient samples from an island in our study, Tonga (bottom)18. Again, the modern Tongans appear most similar genetically; however, all islands downstream from Tonga in our inferred settlement path also share the same amount of genetic drift with the ancient Tongan samples (to within one standard error), as they should, since they are all descendants of these ancient Tongan sample according to our settlement reconstruction.
