Page 110 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol IV

pacific, settlement of 1411

Men naturally despise those who court them, but respect those
who do not giveway to them. • Thucydides (460–404 BCE)

much so, that David Steadman estimates a loss of 8,000 Island Settlement
species or populations within Oceania generally. Settlement of the Pacific occurred in a series of maritime
migrations that began during the Pleistocene and accel-
Deforestation erated in frequency and range during the Late Holocene.
Profound changes also occurred in vegetation patterns. The movement into and across Remote Oceania proba-
Forests retreated with the advent of people who wanted bly reflected improvements in maritime technology, the
to create agricultural land and whose pigs, chickens, and impetus of favorable climatic episodes for sailing, and the
rats foraged for seeds on the forest floor. In New Cale- utility of agriculture for sustained island settlement. Frag-
donia there was some loss of diversity in forest trees after ile island environments were altered profoundly by
1000 BCE, and massive deforestation began by 500 BCE. human colonization.Yet, if extinction on Oceanic islands
On Viti Levu, the main island of Fiji, substantial defor- was catastrophic for biological diversity, exploitation of
estation began about 100 BCE but earlier on the smaller the abundant and naïve fauna was also an optimal strat-
islands.These data suggest that in the Lapita region, set- egy of initial human survival on islands. Such an easy
tled by 1000 BCE, there was relatively little initial impact food supply allowed small colonizing populations to grow
on the landscape, but that massive changes in sediment rapidly and avoid their own possible extinction as quickly
distribution and vegetation patterns developed as popu- as possible. Likewise, substantial deforestation and rede-
lation density increased and settlement expanded inland. position of upland sediments opened up the possibility
Sediment from the hills was eroded into the valleys and of long-term demographic success by intensive agricul-
redeposited around the coasts, increasing opportunities ture. Significant anthropogenic environmental modifica-
for agricultural development. tion, in other words, underwrote the successful settlement
The pattern in the eastern area is less clear, largely be- of most Pacific islands.
cause of uncertainty about the timing of initial human col-
Atholl Anderson
onization. Aceramic East Polynesian archaeology lacks
any horizon marker of initial colonization comparable
Further Reading
to Lapita pottery. Apparently, anthropogenic landscape
Allen, J., & O’Connell, J. F. (2003). The long and short of it: Archaeo-
changes have been dated to 1500 BCE in Mangaia, Cook
logical approaches to determining when humans first colonized Aus-
Islands, and to 500 CE in New Zealand, Easter Island, tralia and New Guinea. Australian Archaeology,57, 5–19.
and the Societies, using samples from lake sediment cores, Anderson, A. J. (2000). Slow boats from China: Issues in the prehistory
of Indo-Pacific seafaring. In P.Veth & S. O’Connor (Eds.), East of Wal-
but the results are contentious. Recent research in New lace’s line: Studies of past and present maritime cultures in the Indo-
Zealand shows that lake sediments are often contami- Pacific region (pp. 13–50). Rotterdam, Netherlands: Balkema.
Anderson,A. J. (2002). Faunal collapse, landscape change and settlement
nated by inwashing of old soil carbon and that radiocar-
history in remote Oceania. World Archaeology, 33, 375–390.
bon dates are therefore too old. Anderson, A. J. (2003). Initial human dispersal in remote Oceania: Pat-
Landscape change in Remote Oceania appears, there- tern and explanation. In C. Sand (Ed.), The prehistory of the Pacific:
Assessments of the Archaeological evidence. Noumea, France: Museé
fore, to divide into two patterns. In the large western Territorial de Nouvelle Caledonié.
islands, it was often slow to start and took up to a mil- Burley, D. V., & Dickinson, W. R. (2001). Origin and significance of a
founding settlement in Polynesia. Proceedings of the National Acad-
lennium to assume major proportions.This seems to be
emy of Sciences USA 98, 11829–11831.
a density-dependent pattern that was tracking the pro- Burney, D. A. (2002). Late quaternary chronology and stratigraphy of
gressive expansion of agriculture. In the eastern islands, twelve sites on Kaua’i. Radiocarbon 44, 13–44.
Clark, G.,Anderson,A. J., & Vunidilo,T. (Eds.). (2001). The archaeology
there was a stronger early impact, probably reflecting the of Lapita dispersal in Oceania. Canberra, Australia: Pandanus Press.
small size of many islands, their very steep slopes and rel- Finney, B. R. (1994). Voyage of rediscovery: A cultural odyssey through
Polynesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
atively fragile soils, and increased climatic volatility in the
Irwin, G. J. (1992). The prehistoric exploration and colonization of the
second millennium CE. Pacific. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.