Page 107 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

1408 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Hawaii
PACIFIC ISLANDS
0 1,000 mi
0 1,000 km
Federated States
Palau of Micronesia Marshall
Islands
North Pacific
Ocean
Nauru
Kiribati
Papua Solomon
New Islands Tuvalu
Guinea
Samoa Society French
Islands
Vanuatu Polynesia
Indian Fiji Tonga Tahiti
Ocean New
A u str alia Caledonia
South Pacific
Ocean
Tasman
N Sea
New
Zealand

By the Late Holocene, around 2000 BCE, gardening around 5000 BCE in South China.This involved the cul-
was probably widespread in New Guinea, and possibly tivation of rice and millet and the husbandry of pigs,
the Solomon Islands, and both the existence of ground- dogs, and chickens.
stone adzes suitable for carpentry and evidence of the fre- Cereal cultivation never reached the New Guinea
quent movement of obsidian around the New Guinea region or anywhere else in Oceania, but the domestic
islands indicate that canoes or other ocean-going water- animals and ceramic culture did, and they were probably
craft existed. In the event, however, it was external influ- associated with gardening of taro, bananas, breadfruit,
ences that were instrumental in propelling the Late and other crops. Linguistic and genetic data show that
Holocene phase of maritime migration. this was not just a case of cultural diffusion. There was
also substantial migration. People of Southeast Asian
Settlement in ancestry moved into coastal New Guinea and on to its
Remote Oceania smaller islands and intermarried with the resident peo-
Archaeological evidence shows that about 1300–1200 ple.The immigrant languages of the Austronesian family
BCE, the older aceramic cultures of the New Guinea prevailed, and it was this culturally mixed population
islands, notably of the Bismarcks, were largely replaced that began the second great phase of Pacific settlement.
by a material culture that included pottery, polished stone Between 1000 and 800 BCE, there was a rapid migra-
adzes and chisels, slate and shell tools, and distinctive tion from the New Guinea islands southeast to Vanuatu
ornaments and fishhooks. While at least some of these and New Caledonia and east to Fiji,Tonga, and Samoa.
elements have a long history in the New Guinea region, Taken from the name of an early site in New Caledonia,
including shell adzes, shell beads, and simple fishhooks, this is known as Lapita culture. At some point, not nec-
ceramics were new, and the distinctive red-slipped, den- essarily at the beginning, it introduced the pig, dog, and
tate-stamped types can be traced to earlier sites in South- chicken, and almost certainly also the cultivation of root
east Asia. In turn, these represent the expansion, after and tree crops, into the Remote Pacific islands.As obsid-
about 2500 BCE, of a neolithic culture that had its origins ian from New Britain is found as far east as Fiji and dec-