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South Pacific Migration
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south pacific pictures map
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The great South Pacific migration to the uninhabited south sea islands started from South China about 30,000 years ago. Small bands of people with basic crafts crossed the seas to Indonesia and eventually colonized neighbouring Papua New Guinea (PNG) and the Solomon Islands. Without navigation skills these Papuan people halted at the gateway to the vast Pacific Ocean. Subsequent migrations from around south-east Asia and Australia reached these islands and the people become collectively known as Melanesians.
Back in South China, new experiments had been made and the people had achieved the art of making a distinct pottery type called Lapita (it has fine white dots and other decorations around the tops and rim of the pots). A second great migration left with this new pottery and is known as the Lapita migration. These people brought with them more advanced techniques in farming and warfare. Their boats were larger and more stable and the navigators had greater skills to sail the open waters. This migration reached Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji about 1500BC. Some migrations progressed further east to find the still uninhabited islands of Samoa and Tonga.
The Melanesian people of PNG and Solomons followed this Lapita migration and are today dominant on Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji. Meanwhile, the Lapita migration reached Rotuma, Samoa and Tonga and about 200BC set out over the last stretches of open water to colonize Cook Island and eventually reaching Easter Island in the far east, Hawaii in the far north and finally, around 900AD, New Zealand in the far south and all islands in-between. The Polynesian triangle had been completed.
The Polynesian and Melanesian people also migrated north and east to the thousands of tiny atolls that make up Micronesia. However, they were not the first colonisers. The islands had been settled by an earlier migration from the Philippines and the inhabitants were of Mongoloid appearance.
Since the first migration from South China, many people have set sail in the Pacific waters to trade and conquer, to seek new pastures or simply to find a home away from other invaders. Many never found the islands they had hoped for, drifting in the still waters without sighting land or being absorbed by the sea in vicious storms. Perhaps some people did drift from Chile or Peru in South America as Thor Heysel so adamantly claimed in his discredited papers of the settlement of the Pacific. But certainly by the time the Europeans arrived on the scene, the great Pacific migration was over and the many subsequent voyages throughout the islands through trade, warfare and inevitably inter-marriage had done enough to conceal the definitive progression of Homo sapien in the region.
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