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"Polynesia Civilization."
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Language Phylogenies Reveal Expansion Pulses and Pauses in Pacific Settlement
Debates about human prehistory often center on the role that population expansions play in shaping biological and cultural diversity. Hypotheses on the origin of the Austronesian settlers of the Pacific are divided between a recent \"pulse-pause\" expansion from Taiwan and an older \"slow-boat\" diffusion from Wallacea. We used lexical data and Bayesian phylogenetic methods to construct a phylogeny of 400 languages. In agreement with the pulse-pause scenario, the language trees place the Austronesian origin in Taiwan approximately 5230 years ago and reveal a series of settlement pauses and expansion pulses linked to technological and social innovations. These results are robust to assumptions about the rooting and calibration of the trees and demonstrate the combined power of linguistic scholarship, database technologies, and computational phylogenetic methods for resolving questions about human prehistory.
Journal Article
Variation in Rapa Nui (Easter Island) land use indicates production and population peaks prior to European contact
Significance Our paper evaluates a long-standing debate and examines whether the prehistoric population of Rapa Nui experienced a significant demographic collapse prior to European contact in AD 1722. We have used dates from hydrated obsidian artifacts recovered from habitation sites as a proxy for land use over time. The analysis suggests region-specific dynamics that include the abandonment of leeward and interior locations. These temporal land-use patterns correlate with rainfall variation and soil quality. This analysis demonstrates that the concept of “collapse” is a misleading characterization of prehistoric human population dynamics. As a result, we see our approach as useful in the study of other prehistoric societies for which a sudden demographic collapse has been proposed in prehistory.
Many researchers believe that prehistoric Rapa Nui society collapsed because of centuries of unchecked population growth within a fragile environment. Recently, the notion of societal collapse has been questioned with the suggestion that extreme societal and demographic change occurred only after European contact in AD 1722. Establishing the veracity of demographic dynamics has been hindered by the lack of empirical evidence and the inability to establish a precise chronological framework. We use chronometric dates from hydrated obsidian artifacts recovered from habitation sites in regional study areas to evaluate regional land-use within Rapa Nui. The analysis suggests region-specific dynamics including precontact land use decline in some near-coastal and upland areas and postcontact increases and subsequent declines in other coastal locations. These temporal land-use patterns correlate with rainfall variation and soil quality, with poorer environmental locations declining earlier. This analysis confirms that the intensity of land use decreased substantially in some areas of the island before European contact.
Journal Article
Ioláni : or, Tahíti as it was : a romance
No detailed description available for \"Ioláni; or, Tahíti as It Was\".
eBook
Palaeotsunamis and their influence on Polynesian settlement
The 11 March 2011 Tōhoku-oki tsunami caused widespread devastation to coastal communities in Japan. This event however was merely the latest, yet largest, of several similar occurrences in the Pacific that include the 2007 Solomon Islands, 2009 South Pacific and 2010 Chilean tsunamis. All have had their predecessors, and a growing data base of palaeotsunamis in the Pacific suggests recurrent events comparable with, and of larger magnitude than their recent historical counterparts. Here we show that evidence for regional palaeotsunamis provides an opportunity to re-evaluate hypotheses used to explain the punctuated history of human settlement patterns across the Pacific. In particular, the almost two millennia ‘long pause’ in eastward migration, and the abandonment of long distance sea-voyaging in the 15th century, may be related to palaeotsunamis, with potential sources including the tectonically active Tonga-Kermadec trench, the Kuwae caldera collapse, and the more distant Pacific-wide Ring of Fire.
Journal Article
Nuancing the Marquesan Post-contact Demographic Decline: An Archaeological and Historical Case Study on Ua Huka Island
The question of demographic decline in the Marquesas Islands is here reinvestigated through an integrated approach to the particular case of Ua Huka. We first attempt to propose a new population estimate for the period prior to European contact, thanks to an archaeologically based method that relies on the length of sleeping areas available in the housing structures recorded in the valleys. From this estimate, we then use ethnohistorical accounts to reassess local demographic evolution throughout the 19th century. This leads us to partly nuance the impact of Westerners, especially the introduction of diseases, which on Ua Huka appears to have been less critical than other factors such as sociopolitical conditions, including intense warfare, linked to unfavourable environmental conditions.
Journal Article
The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use
This paper presents a general equilibrium model of renewable resource and population dynamics related to the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model, with man as the predator and the resource base as the prey. We apply the model to the rise and fall of Easter Island, showing that plausible parameter values generate a \"feast and famine\" pattern of cyclical adjustment in population and resource stocks. Near-monotonic adjustment arises for higher values of a resource regeneration parameter, as might apply elsewhere in Polynesia. We also describe other civilizations that might have declined because of population overshooting and endogenous resource degradation.
Journal Article
Ethnographic parallels and the denial of history
An ever more Pacific-looking past of Britain and other parts of Europe is being constructed by archaeologists. Melanesian anthropology is being continually mined for supposed ethnographic parallels to elucidate the European Neolithic with its 'Big Man' societies and 'dividual' individuals. Although this Melanesian turn in European archaeology is fuelled by a detailed poring over of the minutiae of Pacific and other Third and Fourth World ethnographies, it manages to ignore totally the results of the archaeology of these ethnography-rich regions. This paper discusses the long-term commentary provided by archaeology on the short-term vision provided by the ethnography of Melanesia. It questions the appropriateness of much of the use of analogy by archaeologists in the face of population declines in much of Melanesia in the recent past by something like 90 per cent of pre-contact figures and in the face of evidence that the classic 'Big Man' style of leadership in that region is arguably as modern a creation as the Welfare State, and is a social form possible only under conditions of colonialist pacification.
Journal Article
The Teouma Lapita site and the early human settlement of the Pacific Islands
The Teouma site, on Efate in central Vanuatu, was uncovered during quarrying in 2003 and has proved to be one of the most significant discoveries to date for the colonisation of Remote Oceania. Not only did it bring to light a fine assemblage of the famously diagnostic Lapita ceramics, but a cemetery of more than 25 individuals along with the pots. The skeletons offer an opportunity to investigate the origins of the ‘Lapita people’ who first appeared in the Bismarck archipelago around 3300 years ago and rapidly moved through island Melanesia and Western Polynesia over the next few centuries.
Journal Article
In the South Seas
Source: National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa, licensed by the Department of Internal Affairs for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 New Zealand Licence.
eBook