CANBERRA, April 22 (Xinhua) -- The Lapita people who colonized the Pacific thousands of years ago spread further than previously thought, Australian researchers have found.
In a study published on Friday, a team from the Australian National University (ANU) revealed that discovery of pottery in Papua New Guinea (PNG) has cast new light on the ancient Lapita culture.
The Lapita people were the first to colonize the Pacific islands ranging from Samoa to Vanuatu and New Caledonia.
A separate study published by the ANU in 2016 found they arrived in the Pacific from Asia.
Ben Shaw, lead researcher on the ANU project, said the chance discovery of a pottery shard on Brooker Island off mainland PNG's east coast in 2017 led the team to discover the initial exploration of the Lapita people through PNG was far greater than previously thought.
Their research found the Lapita introduced pottery, tool techniques and new animal species such as pigs to PNG.
"Lapita cultural groups were the first people to reach the remote Pacific islands such as Vanuatu around 3,000 years ago. But in Papua New Guinea where people have lived for at least 50,000 years, the timing and extent of Lapita dispersals are poorly understood," Shaw said in a media release.
"As we dug deeper, we reached an even earlier cultural layer before the introduction of pottery. What amazed us was the amount of mammal bone we recovered, some of which could be positively identified as pig and dog. These animals were introduced to New Guinea by Lapita and were associated with the use of turtle shell to make tools."
Shaw said that the discovery explained why Lapita people colonized huge swathes of the Pacific 3,000 years ago and that the culture's spread was facilitated by earlier contact with Indigenous populations, affecting the region's cultural and linguistic diversity.
"It is one of the greatest migrations in human history and finally we have evidence to help explain why the migration might have occurred and why it took place when it did," he said.
"We had no indication this would be a site of significance, and a lot of the time we were flying blind with the areas we surveyed and when looking for archaeological sites, so it is very much like finding the proverbial needle in a haystack." ■
