Native Hawaiians' homeland is 4,400 miles awayThe Surprising Origins of Native Hawaiians

A genetic study traces Native Hawaiians to Easter Island, about 4,400 miles away, and finds that a chain of founder effects amplified their risk of rare inherited disorders.

Hawaii is one of the most isolated islands on Earth, surrounded by thousands of miles of open ocean. Yet people have lived there for nearly a millennium, part of the Polynesian diaspora.

Eastward, island by island

Alexander Ioannidis of Stanford University and a team of geneticists and anthropologists compared Native Hawaiian genomes and traced their origins to Easter Island, roughly 4,400 miles away, in a study published in Science Advances.

The earlier route ran through Fiji and Tonga, then east to the Cook Islands, Tahiti and Mangareva, settling Easter Island in the early 1200s before pushing on to Hawaii.

Every hop shrinks the gene pool

A small group settling a new place carries only a fraction of the original gene pool. This 'founder effect' can turn previously rare genes into common ones in later generations.

Native Hawaiians passed through several such bottlenecks in sequence, compounding the effect. Ioannidis says their founder effects are more than 10 times larger than in well-studied European populations such as Finns and the Amish.

The cost is three harmful gene variants occurring at 2 to 4 percent higher frequency, linked to dislocated lenses, vision loss and kidney failure.

Genetics owes this population

Ioannidis notes there are no genetic testing recommendations and no insurance reimbursement for these conditions, because science does not even know they exist. This population, he says, urgently needs research resources and attention from geneticists.

Their ancestors conquered the oceans with nothing but what grew on their islands and an oral navigation tradition; this is the least their descendants can do.