3,000-year-old graveyard reveals secrets of Polynesian migration

Evidence from an ancient graveyard has begun to illuminate one of the great mysteries of the human journey: the peopling of the Pacific. A study in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports that the shape and contours of the earliest skull in a 3,000-year-old burial ground in Vanuatu, a group of islands once known as the New Hebrides, suggests a starting point for the great Polynesian migration.

This enduring question was directly framed by Captain Cook, the great 18th century navigator, on his third voyage, when he stopped at the Hawaiian islands. He wrote in his journal: “How shall we account for this Nation spreading itself so far over this vast ocean? We find them from New Zealand to the South, to these islands to the North, and from Easter Island to the Hebrides.”

Anthropologists, archaeologists, oceanographers and geneticists have been trying to answer his question. The latest study, led by Frederique Valentin, an archaeologist from Nanterre in France, reports that although most of the skulls in the graveyard on Efate Island in Vanuatu are linked to the western Pacific’s Melanesian ethnic group, the oldest, dated 3,000 years ago, seemed more aligned with “present-day Polynesian and Asian populations.” The archaeological evidence identifies these as from the ancient Lapita culture, already linked to the modern Polynesian settlers. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015