Discovery sheds light on why Pacific islands were colonized

The discovery of pottery from the ancient Lapita culture by researchers at The Australian National University sheds new light on how the colonization of the Pacific began.

The new study shows that the initial expansion of the Lapita people was much larger than previously thought.

The study, published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal, is based on the discovery of a distinctive Lapita pottery sherd, a broken piece of pottery with sharp edges.

The earliest Lapita dispersals took place in the remote Pacific islands such as Vanuatu around 3000 years ago, but in the country where people have lived for at least 50,000 years, the timing and extent of dispersals are poorly understood.

For a long time, it was thought that Lapita groups avoided most of the country because people were already there.

We chose to work on the island because it would have been the first island people reached when traveling through the archipelago, and it had large bays sheltered from strong wind and waves.

We almost gave up as there was no indication of a past human presence in the top layers of the soil, which was hard like concrete and everyone's hands were sore from digging. We found fragments of pottery deeper down that gave us reason to keep going.

The initial three-day survey at the end of a two-month long field season in 2017 led to a three-week return mission to the site in 2018 and a further four-week expedition in 2019.

The Lapita people introduced pottery that had distinct markings, and they also introduced new tool technologies and animals. The first Pacific peoples migrated from an ancestral Asian homeland through archaeological, linguistic and genetic research.

The dispersal of Lapita through PNG influenced the region as a global center of cultural and linguistic diversity.

Evidence for shaping of obsidian into sharp blades, as well as a range of stone tools, was found by Dr. Shaw.

We reached an earlier cultural layer before pottery was introduced. Some of the mammal bone we recovered could be positively identified as pig and dog. The use of turtle shell to make tools was associated with these animals.

Dr. Shaw said the Lapita people colonized the Pacific islands 3,000 years ago. The paper explains why the islands were colonized at this time and how the indigenous population of Newguinea helped to find new islands to live on.

It is one of the greatest migrations in human history and we have evidence to help explain why it happened.

The research involved many ANU researchers and international partners who showed how migration pathways and island-hopping strategies culminated in rapid and purposeful Pacific-wide settlement.

We had no indication this would be a site of significance, and a lot of the time we were flying blind with the areas we surveyed and when looking for archaeological sites, so it is very much like finding the needle in a haystack.

A lot of our good fortune was due to the cultural knowledge and we built a strong relationship with the locals based on honesty and transparency about our research on their traditional lands. Without their permission, this kind of work wouldn't be possible. The senior author on the paper acknowledges the role that the brooker community played in the research.

The results of the research have been published.

More information: Ben Shaw et al, Frontier Lapita interaction with resident Papuan populations set the stage for initial peopling of the Pacific, Nature Ecology & Evolution (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41559-022-01735-w Journal information: Nature Ecology & Evolution Citation: Discovery sheds light on why Pacific islands were colonized (2022, April 22) retrieved 22 April 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-04-discovery-pacific-islands-colonised.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.