[Time Trowel] Can DNA tell us who Filipinos are?

• The search for Filipino identity has shifted from historical narratives to genetic analysis, with DNA tests influencing perceptions of ancestry and identity.
• Genetic studies reveal complex migration patterns and interactions among populations in the Philippines, challenging the notion of a singular, original Filipino identity.
• The concept of indigeneity and cultural identity in the Philippines is shaped by historical contexts rather than biological ancestry, emphasizing the importance of cultural and social factors over genetic determinism.

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A trowel (/ˈtraʊ.əl/), in the hands of an archaeologist, is like a trusty sidekick — a tiny, yet mighty, instrument that uncovers ancient secrets, one well-placed scoop at a time. It’s the Sherlock Holmes of the excavation site, revealing clues about the past with every delicate swipe.

The search for the “real Filipino” has moved from textbooks and nationalist mythmaking into the language of DNA. Type “Filipino DNA” into YouTube and the “ancestors” appear almost immediately. One video posted this year claims that “Filipinos Aren’t Asian — DNA Proves We’re the Original Pacific Islanders.” Another promises to explain how “Filipino DNA was formed over thousands of years.” Bloodlines, ancient ancestry, migration, and genetic percentages are increasingly presented as answers to where Filipinos came from and, by extension, who Filipinos are.

Full disclosure: I collaborate with geneticists, and some of my archaeological research intersects with population and plant genetics. Genetics has expanded what we can learn about migration, ancestry, interaction, and population history. Problems arise when genetic ancestry becomes a stand-in for ethnic identity or when population history is used to answer the question of who Filipinos are.

Consumer DNA tests can make ancestry categories seem more definite than they are. In March 2026, 23andMe announced 144 genetic groups associated with the Philippines and neighboring regions. These tools help people trace family histories and connections across populations. Problems begin when their categories make identity appear to be encoded in DNA.

DNA researchers estimate ancestry by comparing genetic data across sampled populations using statistical methods. The results depend in part on who is included in those samples, how large and representative the reference groups are, and which statistical methods are used. If the samples or methods change, the estimate can change too. The DNA itself has not changed.

Across archaeology, history, genetics, and related fields, the concept of Austronesian has been attached to pottery, migration, genes, ancestry, food, entire populations and, heck, even dogs. The word can end up mixing language, biology, and culture into a single category. It starts to sound as though Austronesian names a biological population and that hundreds of millions of people across a large part of the world descend from the same ancestral group.

Scientific writing sometimes adds to this problem. A 2025 review, for instance, discusses the genetic origins and migrations of “early Austronesian peoples.” The term may be useful shorthand for a particular study, but it can easily suggest that speakers of Austronesian languages also constitute a biological population. 

A genomic study of 1,028 individuals from 115 Indigenous Philippine populations identified evidence for at least five major migrations into the archipelago over roughly the past 50,000 years. This was not one population arriving with a ready-made package of genes, farming, language, and culture. People arrived at different times, encountered populations already living in the islands, intermarried with them, and contributed to the population histories we see in the Philippines today.

There was no single migration that produced Filipinos, nor was there an original Filipino population waiting in Taiwan, southern China, Sundaland, or somewhere else on a migration map. People migrated, married, traded, fought, and joined other groups. Genetic studies can trace some of these movements, but the patterns they identify are statistical reconstructions of population history. They cannot be read as direct evidence of language or culture.

In addition, a 2021 study found that Ayta Magbukon individuals carry the highest measured levels of Denisovan ancestry reported among the populations studied. The Denisovan finding contributes to our understanding of population history and encounters between modern humans and archaic hominins. It offers little basis for defining who counts as Indigenous or Filipino. 

It is, thus, very easy to be trapped in the search for an “authentic” prehispanic Filipino in genetics, as if biological ancestry could identify who counts as more original or more Indigenous. In the Philippines, indigeneity emerged from historical circumstances shaped by colonial expansion, state formation, displacement, relationships to land, and the ways communities maintained political and cultural identities under changing regimes. Treating it as a biological inheritance risks tying culture and belonging to blood. The US National Academies has warned against treating race, ethnicity, ancestry, and genetic similarity as interchangeable categories. Human genetic variation does not divide people into the fixed groups that such labels often suggest.

Archaeology has often helped reproduce the idea of bounded, culturally uniform peoples. Yet the archaeological record gives us little reason to expect a culturally pure population before 1521 CE. Pots and foods moved across communities. Technologies were borrowed and often remade. People migrated, married, traded, fought, and joined other groups. Languages spread across populations with different ancestries, while communities maintained some practices for generations and changed others along the way.

The idea of an “authentic” prehispanic Filipino says as much about what people want to find in the past as it does about the past itself. A population untouched by migration, contact, intermarriage, or cultural change would be difficult to locate archaeologically. The people who lived in the islands before Spanish colonization were already part of long histories of movement and contact.

Filipino identity came out of those histories and the centuries that followed. It took shape through communities, colonial experiences, resistance, accommodation, language, migration, kinship, food, religion, labor, and political change. None of this can be reduced to an ancestry percentage or traced back to a biologically pure Filipino.

Genetic reconstructions of population history do not tell us who people were. Genetic studies attempt to reconstruct population history. They do not recover identity. Searching our DNA for the original Filipino assumes that such a biological Filipino once existed. The same problem appears when we go looking for an Austronesian in our genes. We are not our DNA tests. – Rappler.com

Stephen B. Acabado is professor of anthropology at the University of California-Los Angeles. He directs the Ifugao and Bicol Archaeological Projects, research programs that engage community stakeholders. He grew up in Tinambac, Camarines Sur.