Indonesia consists of various ethnic groups and races. Therefore, it is very interesting to dig deeper into the origins of our ancestors. One theory is that our ancestors came from Africa.
There are at least four theories regarding the origin of Indonesia's ancestors:
1. Yunnan theory
This theory states that the ancestors of the Indonesian people came from Yunnan, China. This theory is also supported by Mohammad Ali who argues that the Indonesian people came from the Mongols who were pressured by a stronger nation so that they migrated to the South.
2. Archipelago Theory
According to the Nusantara theory, the ancestors of the Indonesian people came from Indonesia itself. This theory is supported by Muhammad Yamin, Gorys Keraf, and J Crawford.
3. Out of Taiwan Theory
In the Out of Taiwan theory, the origin of the Indonesian people is said to come from Taiwan, not Mainland China. This theory is supported by Harry Truman Simanjuntak.
4. Out of Africa Theory
The last theory states that modern humans living today came from Africa. The theoretical basis based on genetics is through research on the mitochondrial DNA of male and female genes.
According to an expert from the United States, Max Ingman, modern humans that exist today came from Africa, then they spread outside Africa.
The latter theory became one of the discussions in the webinar "Uncovering the Mysteries of the Origin of Our Ancestors" held by the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) and the Mochtar Riady Institute for Nanotechnology (MRIN), Tuesday (2/8/2022).
Gludhug A. Purnomo, Phd. candidate Adelaide University Australia, explaining this theory believes humans lived and evolved during the last 150-200 thousand years in a region in Africa.
"During this time period (150-200,000 years ago) they hypothetically lived and developed there, but it wasn't until 55-65,000 years ago that they began to leave Africa, and became the ancestors of all humans in the world," he said.
Genetic material
According to Gludhug, genetic and archaeological evidence shows that after leaving Africa, they headed straight for the Sahul Shelf, which was the land of Papua and Australia, which are still joined.
"Research using mitochondrial DNA there is no mixing of the father and mother, so we can see modern human migration that is influenced by the mother or the mother," he explained.
Genetic material can indeed reveal history. At the same event, Prof. dr. Herawati Sudoyo, Ph.D, principal investigator of MRIN, explained that scientists are trying to reconstruct the history of settlements on islands in Indonesia using a genetic approach.
"This is done to infer arrival times, population size and historical fluctuations, migration patterns, and resulting mixing rates," he said.
This data is then compared with evidence from non-genetic, linguistic, ethnographic, archaeological, and historical data. Then the impact of mixing or its association with various potential variants and health status is also investigated.
"With genomic data, we can get an overview of genomic mixing, see the larger spatial and region of the archipelago. We can also compare it with non-genomic data such as language, archeology and history and study the impact of the mixing process," he said.