Populating the Pacific

Abstract

The original migrants to the islands of the western Pacific likely took place about 25,000 years ago during the last glacial period when sea levels were considerably lower than they are today. New Guinea and its offshore islands would be colonized first, and this is where the development of the Papuan language took place. However, its mountainous interior isolated and fragmented the language into multiple families including perhaps 900 distinct and mutually unintelligible language isolates, some of which are spoken only in a single village of 25–50 individuals. Archaeological and linguistic evidence suggests that the first non-Papuan migrants originating from Taiwan about 5000 years ago were spreading out in new waves of migration to coastal New Guinea and the nearby islands. These people are the likely source of a family of some 400 languages known as Austronesian. Beginning about 3500 years ago some of these Austronesian speakers began to move into islands as far east as Tonga and Samoa where they developed stilt houses along with quadrangular stone adzes, distinctive red pottery and domestic pigs. These were the Lapita people. As they and their progeny began to explore even farther, a considerable sophistication of naval architecture began to emerge along with navigational and seamanship skills. Various forms of the Austronesian language expanded as well, including as far east as Hawaii and Easter Island, and south to New Zealand. The indelicate impacts of these societies on the land are described, as are their divisions into three general cultural groups including Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.