English: Migration routes and their contribution to the East Timor mtDNA pool. The major postulated migration events into ISEA (Island Southeast Asia) and our novel findings are depicted. The asterisk highlights East Timor. The darker grey areas indicate the predicted late Pleistocene coastline. (A) The initial human settlement carrying haplogroups P, Q, N21 and others that arrived (1) between 60–40 kya. Our results indicate (2) a colonization of Australia (southern Sahul) before 37 kya and (3) an incubation period in northern Sahul (NG) followed by westward expansions after 28 kya; (B) The Holocene (1) southward out of Taiwan movement marked by haplogroups M7c1, D5, F1a3, F1a4 between 8–4 kya followed a (2) western or (3) eastern route (that we favour for East Timor), and (4) a local arisal, possibly connected to (1), of the “Polynesian motif” ~6 kya followed by west- and eastward migrations; (C) the postglacial expansion of haplogroup E (and others) (1) originating in eastern Sunda and a dispersal 30–5 kya that (2) reached eastern Indonesia ~10 kya. The inlay pie chart in (A) depicts the proportions of haplogroups associated with (A), (B) and (C) within the extant East Timor population. The dashed line separates the proportion of the “Polynesian motif”, as it has also been described to derive from a separate event. See text in the paper for details.