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READING PASSAGE 9
Beyond the blue horizon
Ancient voyagers who settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean
(1)
An 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.
The site came
to light only by chance. 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. It is the oldest cemetery ever found in the
Pacific islands, and it harbors the remains of an ancient people archaeologists call the Lapita.
(2)
They were daring blue-water adventurers who used basic canoes to rove across the ocean. But they were not
just explorers. They were also pioneers who carried with them everything they would need to build new lives –
their livestock, taro seedlings and stone tools. 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.
(3)
The Lapita left precious few clues about themselves, but Efate expands the volume of data available to
researchers dramatically. The remains of 62 individuals have been uncovered so far, and archaeologists were
also thrilled to find six complete Lapita pots. Other items included a Lapita burial urn
with modeled birds
arranged on the rim as though peering down at the human remains sealed inside. ‘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.’
(4)
DNA 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.’
(5)
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. 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.
(6)
‘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. 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. The real
adventure didn’t begin, however, until their Lapita descendants sailed out of sight of land, with empty horizons
on every side. This must have been as difficult for them as landing on the moon is for us today. Certainly it
distinguished them from their ancestors, but what gave them the courage to launch out on such risky voyages?
(7)
The Lap it as thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing trade winds, Irwin notes. Those
nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been the key to their success. ‘They could
sail out for days into the
unknown and assess the area, secure in the knowledge that if they didn’t find anything, they could turn about
and catch a swift ride back on the trade winds. This is what would have made the whole thing work.’ Once out
there, skilled seafarers would have detected abundant leads to follow to land: seabirds, coconuts and twigs
carried out to sea by the tides, and the afternoon pile-up of clouds on the horizon which often indicates an
island in the distance.
(8)
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For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes would have provided a
safety net. Without this to go by,
overshooting their home ports, getting lost and sailing off into eternity would
have been all too easy. Vanuatu, for example, stretches more than 500 miles in a northwest-southeast trend, its
scores of inrervisible islands forming a backstop for mariners riding the trade winds home.
(9)
All this presupposes one essential detail, says Atholl Anderson, professor of prehistory at the Australian
National University: the Lapita had mastered the advanced art of sailing against the wind. ‘And there’s no
proof they could do any such thing,’ Anderson says. ‘There has been this assumption they did, and people have
built canoes to re-create those early voyages based on that assumption. But nobody has any idea what their
canoes looked like or how they were rigged.’
(10)
Rather than give
all the credit to human skill, Anderson invokes the winds of chance. El Nino, the same
climate disruption that affects the Pacific today, may have helped scatter the Lapita, Anderson suggests. He
points out that climate data obtained from slow-growing corals around the Pacific indicate a series of
unusually frequent El Ninos around the time of the Lapita expansion. By reversing the regular east-to-west
flow of the trade winds for weeks at a time, these super El Ninos might have taken the Lapita on long
unplanned voyages.
(11)
However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific, then called it quits for
reasons known only to them. Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific and perhaps they were too
thinly stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more
than a few thousand in total, and in
their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands – more than 300 in Fiji alone.
