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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 09 2020, @07:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the moving-on dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Research led by scientists at the University of Southampton has found settlers arrived in East Polynesia around 200 years earlier than previously thought.

Colonisation of the vast eastern Pacific with its few and far-flung island archipelagos was a remarkable achievement in human history. Yet the timing, character, and drivers of this accomplishment remain poorly understood.

However, this new study has found a major change in the climate of the region, which resulted in a dry period, coinciding with the arrival of people on the tiny island of Atiu, in the southern group of the Cook Islands, around 900AD.

Findings are published in the paper, 'Human settlement of East Polynesia earlier, incremental and coincident with prolonged South Pacific drought' in the journal PNAS.

"The ancestors of the Polynesians, the Lapita people, migrated east into the Pacific Ocean as far as Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, reaching them around 2800 years ago. But for almost 1500 years humans failed to migrate any further into the pacific," explains lead researcher, Professor David Sear of the University of Southampton. "Our research gives us a much more accurate timescale of when people first arrived in the region and helps answer some key questions about why they made their hazardous journey east."

[...] Professor Sear adds: "Today, changing climate is again putting pressures on Pacific island communities, only this time the option to migrate is not so simple. Within two centuries of first arrival those first settlers changed the landscape and the ecology, but were able to make a home. Pacific islanders now live with modified ecologies, permanent national boundaries and islands already occupied by people. The ability to migrate in response to changing climate is no longer the option it once was."

Journal Reference:

David A. Sear, et. al. Human settlement of East Polynesia earlier, incremental, and coincident with prolonged South Pacific drought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2020; 201920975 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1920975117


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @07:44AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @07:44AM (#980521)

    My great great great .... great grandma spread rumor about piles of gold to be found in the pacific islands because she had a dream or some such shit.

    She also predicted that there will be bunch of knucklehead "editors" on soy .... something. Soybean, soy sauce, not sure, who knows.

    Too bad, she was illiterate - she would have published a research piece otherwise.

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @12:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2020, @12:30PM (#980550)

    We already fixed AGW by making everyone stay at home, so when and where Samoans came from is of little interest anymore.

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