HY 101 ASSIGNMENT 1
Course Title: Pacific History
Assessment: 1
Name: Selai Cavunisautu
Student ID: s11096210
Essay Topic:
What Is The Evidence That The First Wave Of Pacific Islanders were Papuans?
It is a generally accepted fact that the first inhabitants of the Pacific Islands were of two major categories known as the Papuans and the Austronesians. Various remains found across the Pacific have provided concrete evidence that the first wave of Pacific Islanders were Papuans who arrived between fifty to sixty thousand years ago and were hunters and gatherer’s that migrated across the Pacific during the Pleistocene era.
To begin with, questioning the origins of Pacific Islanders spawns both serious theory as well as fanciful myths. The two important continents of Sunda as well as Sahul are important landmarks in providing evidence of Papuans being the first Islanders. Sunda now known as Southeast Asia and Sahul now known as Australia or Australinea were connected as one massive continent during the Pleistocene era, this as such is an important consideration with regards to the first wave of Pacific Islanders in the Pacific.
“Sunda or sub-continental Southeast Asia, was already home to the hominid species Homo erectus by the beginning of the Pleistocene epoch some 1.8 million years ago’’. These Homo erectus migrants from Sunda were believed to have been defeated by the Wallace Line; a boundary separating Sunda from Indonesia . The arrival of the Homo sapiens or the modern humans also known as Papuans had quickly spread across Sahul; modern day New Guinea and Australia. According to Alfred Wallace; he suggests that due to the Pleistocene era of ‘maximum glaciations’ in which there were lower sea levels that exposed greater land surfaces, had affected human migration. The low sea level , would in fact enable much travel by water across straits and between islands thus human population began to rise from mainland Sunda into Sahul some sixty to forty thousand years ago. It is likely that they came in small numbers and at long intervals. “Anthropologists tell us that these first migrants, dark- skinned, short of stature, with frizzy hair were the direct ancestors of modern Austroloids- the aborigines of Australia and Highland people of New Guinea”. By about 1800 B.C their descendents migrated from New Guinea and reached the Solomon’s and over the next thousand years reached other regions of Near Oceania.
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Moreover, another factor which provides evidence that the first wave of Islanders were in fact Papuans are the traces of artifacts and remains across the Oceania. These artifacts come in the form of early stone tools and axes which is believed to have been used for hunting and gathering, this can be told from the intricate pattern of the tools and with the assistance of various dating techniques such as thermoluminescene, these artifacts dates back to the times of the arrival of early Papuans. According to an article by Weule; between 2009 and 2010 a team of archaeologists led by Dr. Mcniven’s excavated sites at Caution Bay, northwest of Port Mosby and these excavations revealed a wealth of implements such as stone tools, cutting tools and stone axes made out of volcanic rock which dated about twenty-five thousand and twenty-nine thousand years ago around the same time early Papuans would have settled. Moreover, these tools and remains describe homo sapiens who were familiar with the sea and had established new settlements. The remains of these archaic Papuans have been found across Near Oceania; from one northern site in New Guinea which according to archaeologists served as shelter as early as forty thousand years ago to the Matenkupkum cave site on New Ireland in the Bismark Archipelago which had once accommodated these Austroloids around thirty three years ago. As such, based upon these findings, it is generally accepted that these remains belonged to these archaic Papuans who had first moved from Sunda to Sahul and upon settlement accumulated various skills in order to adapt and survive in Near Oceania.
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Furthermore, because of the skills developed by these Papuans in order to survive, that is the early stone tools which are hoe like waisted blades and flaked ax suggests that forest hedge clearance was taking place and as such these Papuans were practicing a form of horticulture or domestication of plants and animals hence, providing evidence of their existence in the Oceania. From these, it can be said that their sole purpose was to search out new settlements, exploit resources and survive wherever possible. In addition to this, radio-carbon testing confirms hunting and gathering activity, around the time Papuans were believed to have settled. “ Rising sea levels and mean temperatures enabled crop cultivation in the Western Highlands of Papua New Guinea. There is convincing evidence for the earliest ditch and drainage systems, such as those at the swamp margins in Kuk in the Mount Hagen region. Taro was apparently cultivated in Kuk’s hollows and gutters from 9000 to 5500 years ago”. With the assistance of scientific techniques such as palynology which is the study of plant pollen and phytoliths or fossils in plants, it revealed the great age of the Kuk Swamp which provides evidence of the early settlement of the Papuans who used that site for domestication of plants and farming.
Moreover, the cultivation of taro in these parts of New Guinea provides evidence that the Papuans had moved from South East Asia with these plants and settled in New Guinea; because Taro is originally from Southeast Asia and then was purposely cultivated in New Guinea for around six thousand years. This as such provides concrete evidence of the movement of the human population from Sundaland to Suhal where archaic Papuans settled. In addition to this, “ Remains found in Fotoruma cave near the Poah river on Guadacanal have been carbon dated to about 1300 BC. The findings give evidence of an agricultural people who planted taro on shifting plots and raised animals”. This evidence of an agricultural people refers to the Papuans because of their hunter-gathering techniques of survival.
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All in all, questioning where Pacific Islanders come from requires one to look back into the past and re-construct movements of the first humans into the Pacific. Various evidence have proved that the first Islanders were indeed Papuans; their distinctive movements during the Pleistocene epoch as well as their settlement patterns into Near Oceania with their distinctive domestication of plants such as taro which originates from Southeast Asia proves that Papuans were of the homo sapiens who settled into Sahul and that their descendents now occupy most of Near Oceania.
Approx- ( 1005 words)
Bibliography
* Fisher, Steven. A History of the Pacific Islands .Basingstoke:Palgrave, 2002
* Margolis, Susanna. Adventuring In the Pacific: The islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia .San Francisco: Sierra Club Books,1998
* Matsuda, Matt. Pacific Worlds: A History of sea’s , People’s and Cultures. Cambridge Press.
* Genelle Weule. Lapita find opens new chapter of Pacific history. ABC Science, December
2, 2011. Accessed August 15,2013.
<http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/12/02/3381368.htm//>
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[ 1 ]. S.R. Fisher, A History of the Pacific Islands( Basingtok, Palgrave, 2002), pp. 2
[ 2 ]. M.K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, People’s and Culture( Cambridge University Press,2012),pp.12
[ 3 ]. S. Margolis, Adventuring In the Pacific: The Islands Of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia(Revised And Updated) ( Sierra Club Books. San Francisco, 1998), pp.18
[ 4 ]. G.Weule ,Lapita find opens new chapter of Pacific history, ABC Science, December 2, 2011, accessed August 15, 2013
[ 5 ]. Fisher et al, A History Of the Pacific Islands, pp 9
[ 6 ]. Ibid.,pp.8
[ 7 ]. Margolis et al, Adventuring In The Pacific: The Islands of Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, pp 32
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