The early history of Island Southeast Asia is often characterized as the story of two major population dispersals: the initial Paleolithic colonization of Sahul ~45 thousand years ago and the much later Neolithic expansion of Austronesian-speaking farmers ~4,000 years ago. Here, in the largest survey of Indonesian Y chromosomes to date, we present evidence for multiple genetic strata that likely arose through a series of distinct migratory processes. We genotype an extensive battery of Y chromosome markers, including 85 SNPs/indels and 12 Y-STRs, in a sample of 1,917 men from 32 communities located across Indonesia.

We find that the paternal gene pool is sharply subdivided between western and eastern locations, with a boundary running between the islands of Bali and Flores. Analysis of molecular variance reveals one of the highest levels of between-group variance yet reported for human Y chromosome data.

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