Abstract
With human habitation in the Mariana Islands by 1500 B.C., the course of Asia–Pacific culture history was permanently altered. For the first time in human history, people lived in the remote and small islands of the Pacific, known as Remote Oceania, held the last inhabitable lands on earth. Although previously disputed and often dismissed, new archaeological research now confirms the early dating, the site settings, and the material culture contents. The results leave no doubt that the first Marianas settlers came from Island Southeast Asia at least as early as 1500 B.C., yet the precise motivations and circumstances can be argued variably. Additional studies allow a view of the first contact between human beings and the Remote Oceanic environment, with significant implications about human-environment relations in general. In total, the archaeological findings force a new understanding of Asia–Pacific archaeology that has been lacking for some decades, now placing Marianas settlement firmly as the first human settlement of Remote Oceania.
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Carson, M.T. (2014). Conclusions and Implications of Earliest Marianas Sites. In: First Settlement of Remote Oceania. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, vol 1. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01047-2_11
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