Did You Get Austronesian Matches?
By Donald N. Yates, Founder and Principal Investigator
The genetic trails of surviving all-female societies like some Arawak and of certain neighboring Carib tribes who preserve toxic male warrior values lead to overlapping territories in Brazil…and beyond that, to a common origin in Sundaland and Austronesians. Art copyright by Richard L. Thornton, Architect. Used with permission.
Since the appearance of my book The Countercurrents of Prehistory last year, I hear from more and more of our customers about their Austronesian matches. In almost all cases, mirabile dictu, it is a confirmation of their American Indian ancestry. Our current podcast tells the surprising story of the Euchee Indians who called themselves Children of the Sun after their original solar beliefs in Sundaland and Island Southeast Asia. Star witness Holly McDaniel matches Euchee, Polynesian, New Zealand, Madagascar, Samoa, Libya, Tonga… I have partial Euchee ancestry through my Great-Great-Grandfather Yates, who came from Washington County, Georgia and my forensic profile matches Austronesian as well as American Indian.
As we wrote in our blog post about South American Indians (who also belong to the Austronesian world):
Contradicting the early settlement patterns “proved” by a major study earlier this year with its four Siberian populations (Amazonians, Andeans, Chaco Amerindians and Patagonians),[1] STR frequency data analyzed by the DNA Consultants forensic research team suggest rather an Austronesian origin or co-origin, one similar to the Euchee and neighboring tribes in North America.[2]
My own DNA matches include alternating Austronesian and American Indian results. For instance, several of my top matches are Native American (#3 is Enrolled Cherokee) but there are also signals of what is evidently Austronesian deep ancestry. Since it was added to our database this year, my no. 10 strongest match is now Indonesia – Sumatra – Minangkabau (n=25). Sumatra is one of the most populous countries in Southeast Asia. Its markedly matriarchal people trace their origins back to the drowned continent of Sundaland.
Ripples of First Floods
The classic account of Sumatra’s archetypally matriarchal society is Women at the Center: Life in a Modern Matriarchy by Peggy Reeves Sanday (2002). Our recent publication The Countercurrents of Prehistory argues that Sundaland was originally strongly matriarchal and all its offshoots share matriarchal traits combined with patriarchal traditions. Sundaland in many ways ranks as Civilization One.
As suggested some years ago, the Cherokee origin-story, like that of the Hopi, almost certainly goes back to an Austronesian homeland.[3]
I also get a high match to indigenous Malays, Dayak of Borneo, Taiwanese Chinese minorities and South American Indians.
Austronesian overtones can be discerned in individual single haplotypes, which, like private alleles, are often revealing. The book Countercurrents is centered on rare genes like the Sundaland Gene rather than common genes, and DNA Consultants’ most recent entry into the DNA testing space, its Basic Haplotype Test, is similarly focused.[4]
Matches like Atayal Taiwan and Zoque Indians for customers testing with the Basic Haplotype Test also underscore the Austronesian/Sundanese version of world history.
| Location | World frequency | Strongest Matches and General Character of Haplotype |
| D8S1179A | 9% | Atayal (Taiwan) 34%…Taiwanese Aboriginal |
| D8S1179B | 14% | Munda (India) 40%…East African |
| D21S11A | 22% | Diegueño Indians 77%…North Asian |
| D21S11B | 10% | Sioux 40%…Andean…Children of the Sun Gene |
| D7S820A | 25% | Dogrib Indians 50%…Central Africa…Thuya Gene |
| D7S820B | 17% | Mexicaneros 51%…Central Chinese…Yellow Emperor Gene |
| D3S1358A | 33% | Dogrib Indians 83%…American Indian…Ancient One Gene |
| D3S1358B | 29% | Eskimo (Yukon) 61%…Mongol, Southeast Asian |
| D13S317A | 13% | Vietnamese 38%…Borneo Dayak, Australoid…Denisovan Gene |
| D13S317B | 12% | Seri Indians (Sonora) 67%…Andean…First Peoples Gene |
| vWA | 10% | U.S. Black 28%…Southwest African |
| vWA | 25% | Creek Indians 58%…Andean |
| D18S51A | 18% | Sioux Indians 60%…Taiwanese Aboriginal…Crazy Horse Gene |
| D18S51B | 14% | Mozambique 28%…West Central Africa |
| D5S818A | 4% | Sioux Indians 31%…Native American |
| D5S818B | 34% | Zoque (Oaxaca)…Turkic/American Indian |
| FGAA | 11% | Dogrib Indians 58%…Andean…Amerind Gene |
| FGAB | 6% | Tarahumara Indians 36%…Andean…Cochise Gene |
Rare haplotypes in reconstructed Hopi ancestry match numerous worldwide Sundaland dispersals. Source: Countercurrents, p. 65.
My DNA also scores high matches with the following: Malaysian Sarawak Melanu, Borneo Dayak, South American Indian, Taiwanese Chinese and Austronesian Megapopulation (#3). These are all deep history connections and I have no other indication of being identical by descent except haplotype and rare genes testing—so far limited to DNA Consultants and incompatible with other DNA companies’ methods. Whole genome and gedmatch results may confirm these matches–but most geneticists and consumers of genetic tests do not even look for them.
No one has been taught at school that there was once a human homeland as large as North America in the South China Sea that disappeared in climate change over several millennia. If AI knows about Sundaland its history and geography are sketchy and skeptical.
The match to Minangkabau in this English-Scottish Cherokee-Choctaw boy born of Alabama parentage can be explained by a dissection of my alleles. For instance, I have D3=14,15 in my profile. D3=15 is relatively plentiful though rare on a worldwide basis, but it spikes in Euchee Indians (42%), Oaxaca Zoque Indigenous (also 42%) and Dogrib Indians (83.3%). On D5, where I have a biallelic (double) STR reading of 11, this value is highest in the world in the Zoque (73%), while the Parakana Tribe in Brazil has a frequency of 66%. All these are Austronesian linked.
We saw in a previous blog post that scientists believe a high THO1 repeat (8 or 9 or 9.3 or 10) is associated with impulsive male aggression and difficulty handling pressure. For instance, the Awa-Guaja people living deep in the jungle in the state of Maranhão have a frequency of 66%, the highest incidence worldwide of what DNA Consultants has dubbed the Sundaland Gene. This is a value of 10 at the standard forensic location of THO1. The Waiapi, who live in the southeastern border area of French Guiana at the confluence of the rivers Camopi and Oyapock, have the world’s second highest level (43.5%). It’s the same area where actual Amazons were visited by a Brazilian businessman in 1954, as we reported in this blog. The average incidence among all South American tribes is 15%, the same as Java in the Austronesian and Sundanese heartland.[5]
Top Populations with THO1=8 (Donald Yates’ value)
| Rank | Population | % |
| 1 | Brazil – Amazonian Indigenous – Zoe (n=42) | 81 |
| 2 | Brazil – Amazonian Indigenous – Tiriyo (n=41) | 44 |
| 3 | South African – Bantu (n = 63) | 38 |
| 4 | Namibia – Windhoek (n = 195) | 36 |
| 5 | East Timor (n = 186) | 34 |
| 6 | Guinea-Bissau C (n = 92) | 33 |
| 7 | East Timor (n = 141) | 33 |
| 8 | Mozambique (n = 110) | 32 |
| 9 | South African – Black – Capetown (n = 98) | 31 |
| 10 | Angolan – Cabinda (n = 110) | 30 |
The worldwide average for THO1=8 is 11.9%.
TH01 is a standard forensic marker located on the human tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) gene on chromosome 11. It is unlike all other STR haplotypes in actually “doing something,” helping to regulate one’s pleasure, stress and “fight or flight” reactions. As we wrote in Countercurrents (p. 21):
THO1=10 “was significantly overrepresented in individuals demonstrating violent behavior including sexual assaults and in males with impulsive violent behavior,” said the Australian study.[6] This value (or haplotype, as geneticists call it) is rare. On a worldwide estimate, THO1=10 is found in only 2.2% of people. But its incidence spikes to as much as 15% in Southeast Asians and Austronesians. The highest matches are Java, Malaysia, Thai, Bali, Borneo Dayak, Filipino, Taiwan and Vietnam. Such a picture led us to call it the Sundaland Gene, after the drowned landmass in Island Southeast Asia. We speculated that it was concentrated around this very epicenter. It survived in a circle around the South China Sea.
Beyond simple forensic uses, alleles as potential rare genotypes have been reported for longevity, depression, attempted suicide, addiction and a host of neurological, psychiatric and cardiovascular risk factors. Could the values for high THO1 values have had a selective advantage in societies like the Sundanese and South American Indians?
Was there a reason Amazon warriors and fierce jungle tribes valuing the “warrior gene” developed in the same times and places? If so, rare genes may have been subject to more than just random drift. They may tell an evolutionary story. They may hold answers why environmental factors and historical circumstances favor some variations and why others are non-players—why some increase fitness while others do not. They may explain why some individuals are more likely to survive and reproduce, gradually increasing the frequency of these traits within a population until what was rare becomes common.
[1] Elena S. Gusareva et al, “From North Asia to South America: Tracing the Longest Human Migration through Genomic Sequencing,” Science 388/6748 (15 May 2025).
[2] Donald N. Yates, The Countercurrents of Prehistory: What Rare Genes Can Say about Early Human Migration, illustrations by Richard L. Thornton, architect, with a foreword by Jane Mellin (Longmont: Panther’s Lodge Publishers, 2025), esp. Ch. 9, “Children of the Sun,” pp. 192-215.
[3] The Island Southeast Asian or Oceanic setting of the legend that begins “When we lived beyond the Big Water” was first established in my book Old World Roots of the Cherokee (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2012). Such a tropical deep history was hardly suspected before and is mostly dismissed by experts today in favor of an Arctic, Siberian and North Asian origin. The authentic Cherokee national origin story is reprinted in its entirety and discussed at length in Countercurrents (2025), Appendix D.
[4] See “New Basic Haplotype Test Is ‘Must-Have’ for DNA Mavens” (blog post, June 11, 2024).
[5] See “Fight or Flight on the Amazon” (blog post, Dec. 31, 2025).
[6] Nicole Wyner, Mark Barash and Dennis McNevin, “Forensic Autosomal Short Tandem Repeats and Their Potential Association with Phenotype,” Frontiers in Genetics 6/11 (2020), 884, doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.00884.
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