Abstract
The first habitation of the Mariana Islands by 1500 B.C. must be understood in relation to the large-scale picture of Asia–Pacific archaeology. People lived for many thousands of years in the close-situated islands of “Near Oceania,” where they managed short-distance water-crossings in Island Southeast Asia and as far East as New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago, and parts of the Solomon Islands. The first breakthrough into longer distance ocean voyaging, into the realm of “Remote Oceania,” occurred by 1500 B.C. in the Mariana Islands. Some centuries later, additional long-distance migrations proceeded through other parts of the Pacific. Early Marianas settlement reveals deep cultural links with Island Southeast Asia, extended into the Pacific, long before other remote Pacific Islands were settled.
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Carson, M.T. (2014). Position of the Marianas in Oceanic Prehistory. In: First Settlement of Remote Oceania. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, vol 1. Springer, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01047-2_2
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