Those nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been the key to their success. The Lap it as thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing trade winds, Irwin notes. Certainly it distinguished them from their ancestors, but what gave them the courage to launch out on such risky voyages? This must have been as difficult for them as landing on the moon is for us today. The real adventure didn’t begin, however, until their Lapita descendants sailed out of sight of land, with empty horizons on every side. Those sailing skills, he says, were developed and passed down over thousands of years by earlier mariners who worked their way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific, making short crossings to nearby islands. ‘All we can say for certain is that the Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and they had the ability to sail them,’ says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University of Auckland. Nor do the oral histories and traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they turn into myths long before they reach as far back in time as the Lapita. There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide any answers: how did the Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon landing, many times over? No-one has found one of their canoes or any rigging, which could reveal how the canoes were sailed. ‘It’s an important discovery,’ says Matthew Spriggs, professor of archaeology at the Australian National University and head of the international team digging up the site, ‘for it conclusively identifies the remains as Lapita.’ĭNA teased from these human remains may help answer one of the most puzzling questions in Pacific anthropology: did all Pacific islanders spring from one source or many? Was there only one outward migration from a single point in Asia, or several from different points? ‘This represents the best opportunity we’ve had yet,’ says Spriggs, ‘to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came from, and who their closest descendants are today.’ Other items included a Lapita burial urn with modeled birds arranged on the rim as though peering down at the human remains sealed inside. The remains of 62 individuals have been uncovered so far, and archaeologists were also thrilled to find six complete Lapita pots. The Lapita left precious few clues about themselves, but Efate expands the volume of data available to researchers dramatically. Within the span of several centuries, the Lapita stretched the boundaries of their world from the jungle-clad volcanoes of Papua New Guinea to the loneliest coral outliers of Tonga. They were also pioneers who carried with them everything they would need to build new lives – their livestock, taro seedlings and stone tools. They were daring blue-water adventurers who used basic canoes to rove across the ocean. It is the oldest cemetery ever found in the Pacific islands, and it harbors the remains of an ancient people archaeologists call the Lapita. An agricultural worker, digging in the grounds of a derelict plantation, scraped open a grave – the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years old. Ancient voyagers who settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific OceanĪn important archaeological discovery on the island of Efate in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu has revealed traces of an ancient seafaring people, the distant ancestors of todays, Polynesians.

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