New light shines on Pacific’s earliest settlers

Researchers have traveled thousands of years back in history to make a significant discovery about a culture considered today as the ancient ancestors of the Polynesians.

Two just-published papers are the most comprehensive study yet of the origins of the people of Vanuatu – a country seen as a geographical gateway from Asia to the distant Pacific Ocean.

The Australian National University (ANU)-led research combined DNA analysis of ancient skeletons and modern samples with archaeological evidence to piece together a complete timeline of migration to the island nation.

The results of the study confirmed that the first inhabitants of Vanuatu belonged to the Lapita culture and came here from Southeast Asia 3,000 years ago. Later, the Papuans came from New Britain to the Bismarck Islands east of New Guinea and became part of Papua New Guinea.

Dr Stuart Bedford from the Australian National University said this was the first time researchers were able to analyse fully sequenced DNA samples from the Vanuatu archipelago.

“We are able to routinely trace a complete genetic timeline, from the first inhabitants all the way to the modern day,” Bedford said.

“The first generation of immigrants to Vanuatu were predominantly Asian, and then pretty quickly you have a series of Papuan immigrants coming from the Bismarck Archipelago, who have been in the area for about 50,000 years.”

This trend has continued over the next 3000 years until today as the genetic lineage has been largely replaced by that of Papuan immigrants.

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“The people of Vanuatu today, like many peoples in the Pacific, have dual ancestry.”

Australian National University researcher Professor Matthew Spriggs said this was the first time we had been able to pinpoint exactly where these Papuan migrant groups came from.

“They came from New Britain, a Papuan island east of New Guinea — that makes sense. New Britain has some of the earliest known Lapita sites.

“So what we think is that the Lapita arrived in New Britain and moved directly to Vanuatu and encouraged some of the local population that was already living on New Britain to move there as well.”

The strength of the Lapita culture is evident in the continuity of the language, Bedford said.

“The Lapita people who originally came to Vanuatu from Southeast Asia spoke an Austronesian language,” he said.

“The language persists and over 120 of its derivatives are still spoken today, making Vanuatu the most linguistically diverse place per capita on Earth.

“This is a unique case where a group’s genetic ancestry was replaced but its language persisted.”

Retracing the settlement of the Pacific has long been a complex challenge for scientists, but DNA technology is helping to fill in some key gaps.

It is currently thought that seafarers settled around Oceania sometime between 50,000 and 25,000 BC before the Austronesians left Taiwan around 2000 BC and migrated to the islands of Southeast Asia.

A few centuries later, around 1500 BC, Austronesian voyagers who entered Near Oceania mixed with the different groups already existing there, eventually giving rise to the unique Lapita people, and Polynesian culture was born.

Archaeologists believe that the Maori arrived in Aotearoa around the end of the 13th century.

What’s less clear is the exact spot they once called home — Hawaiki is unlikely to be a separate island.