AR3008 Peoples of Coast and Sea

Reviewing origins and migratory routes of the initial colonists to Near Oceania

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Name: K.A. Woodroffe
Student Number: 12383723
Lecturer: Dr. S. Ulm
Due Date: 11 October 2011
Word Count: 2,665
Essay remit: Discuss different views on the initial colonisation of the Pacific.

Reviewing origins and migratory routes of the initial colonists to Near Oceania

The colonisation of the Pacific Islands is considered a history of numerous voyages “on the roads of the winds” but evidence is inferential rather than archaeological as no preservation of watercraft remains (Kirch 2000:2). Accidental colonisation has been argued but the weight of evidence points to deliberate voyaging, repeated crossings and return voyages of cognitively capable peoples to enable viable population existences (Anderson and O’Connor 2008; Kirch 2000; Spriggs 1997). Pacific Island colonisation was the culmination of the last major expansion of modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) ‘out of Africa’ (Fischer 2002).

The colonisation of Near Oceania (Figure 1) should be considered in the context of sea levels during the Pleistocene when lowered sea levels joined the Malay Peninsula to Indonesia, an enormous area known as Sunda, with only the islands of Wallacea being a barrier to movement of people or animals (Kirch 2010). The initial dispersal to Near Oceania, with settlement of the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands, occurred more than 30,000 years ago after modern humans had entered east of the Sunda shelf at least 39,000 years ago (Anderson and O’Connor 2008; Gosden 1992). The enigma of the first voyagers into Near Oceania has been the contentious origins and migratory route(s) which have “traditionally been cast as large-scale, uni-directional and all-embracing” (Szabó and O’Connor 2004:621).

I will review three models of migration to Near Oceania. Model 1 is ‘out of Taiwan’, through the Philippines and across Papua New Guinea replacing indigenous populations (Bellwood 1995). Model 2 promotes an indigenous origin in Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) with two maritime migration movements north through the Philippines to Taiwan and south through ISEA into Near Oceania (after Anderson and O’Connor 2008; Oppenheimer 1998, 2004). Model 3 suggests origination in Vietnam or South West China, with a migration route through the southern Indonesian island chain (Dobney et al. 2008). After evaluating the commonalities and diversity of the defining characteristics of linguistic, archaeological, genetic and commensual evidence I will argue for Model 1 as a secondary migration route with Model 2 being the initial colonists’ route and further, that Model 2 was neither uni-directional nor uni-linear but rather a voyaging corridor for repetitive voyages.

Figure 1: The Pacific Islands are divided into Near and Remote Oceania (dashed line) with tripartite geographical regions of Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia (Kirch 2000:6).

Language dispersal is cultural not biological and, since Edward Sapir’s (1916) hypothesis that the chronology of language dispersal can be traced to the area of greatest linguistic diversity, has been the conventional viewpoint (Bellwood 1995; Kirch 1997; Pawley and Ross 1995; Spriggs, 1995, 1997). Models 1 and 2 differ in the location of the homeland for the Austronesian-speaking people as well as the timing of the dispersal (Gray et al. 2009).
Model 1’s influential claim for the centre of origin and direction of migration of has been ‘out of Taiwan’ (Bellwood, 1995). Model 2 posits an indigenous Austronesian origin in ISEA (Oppenheimer 1998, 2004) (Figure 2). Both pathways are traced with difficulty as few artefacts remain to establish Austronesian connections, hence a reliance on linguistic reconstruction, “simply because inferences about origin are obtained more readily from language than from material culture or other archaeological