Excavation of Wanelek archaeological site, New Guinea Highlands, in 1972. (Susan Bulmer)
Posted on 09/04/2015 12:33:37 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
A 3000-year-old fragment of pottery has solved a mystery behind the movement of an ancient people of South East Asia into the Pacific.
These ancient colonisers - known as Lapita - carried with them agricultural plants derived from mainland New Guinea. However, until now there has been no evidence of an early connection between the Lapita and indigenous New Guineans.
Now, a new analysis of pottery pieces found at a site in the New Guinea Highlands reveals a connection dating back to the time before the Lapita moved into the remote Pacific...
The Lapita people left Southeast Asia and entered the Western Pacific 4000-3000 years ago. About 300 years later they started heading east to become the first people to settle on the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji, moving later to Samoa and Tonga.
Evidence of their settlement is found in the remains of intricately patterned pottery used for rituals.
Gaffney says the study, published today in PLOS One, is based on analysis of a number of pottery sherds excavated from Wanelek in the Kaironk River valley, in the New Guinea Highlands in the 1970s.
The research team returned to the excavation site recently and, using carbon dating technology, were able to date the site of the find to around 3000 years ago. Chemical analysis of the clay and temper on the pottery also revealed its manufacturing origin.
Gaffney says three technological factors - manual tempering, red slip, and paddle and anvil technique - found on the samples were indicative of Austronesian manufacture.
(Excerpt) Read more at abc.net.au ...
Excavation of Wanelek archaeological site, New Guinea Highlands, in 1972. (Susan Bulmer)
Austronesian-Polynesian-Malay people?
The aliens showed them the way. ;')
Difficult to say without genetic traces in human remains. The groups immediately preceding the last layer were annihilated by the newcomers, just as happened in much of the rest of the world.
For years I have been struck by the extreme overweight in some of the Hawaiians shown in screen and TV, especially with some of the rulers. I was reading some books on dieting the other day, and it suddenly occurred to me that people with the capacity to put on fat, and have difficulty loosing it would be most likely to survive extremely long sea voyages where failure to find land timely would result in many dying. Thus, not only were those most efficient at fatness be most likely to survive, but also most likely to end up being rulers.
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