By Aaron Wolf Ph.D., Science Communications at Ancestry

Surprised by your Hawaii or New Zealand Maori result?

If you expected to see results for Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori, here’s why you might be surprised.

In our ancestral regions 2022 update, we split the area formerly covered by our Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori region into separate Hawaii and New Zealand Maori regions. These new regions provide more precise results for people of both native Hawaiian and Maori heritage.

Meanwhile, people from places near or with deep historical and genetic ties to Hawaii and New Zealand—including French Polynesia and the Cook Islands—will most likely see their previous Eastern Polynesia & New Zealand Maori percentage split between the new Hawaii and New Zealand Maori regions.

History helps explain why. These populations all descend from Polynesian settlers who sailed to the Society Islands and Austral Islands over 1,000 years ago. The Society and Austral Islands later served as the origin point for migrations to the remaining remote Polynesian Islands, such as Hawaii, New Zealand, and Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

 
Possible Polynesian migration

These migrations represent founder events for Hawaii and New Zealand, and these populations carry their own unique genetic signal. This is what allows us to create separate ancestral regions for these populations. However, each still shares enough DNA with the other and with Indigenous people in French Polynesia that trying to add an additional French Polynesian region causes the results to not perform as well for all three regions.

As always, we continue to look for ways to add more precision and better represent the populations in this part of the world. This is made possible by people from these regions who share their DNA and family tree information with us to improve the ancestral origins results for all users.