Peopling of Oceania

) There is no known evidence of archaic human species having outgrown the Wallacea to establish themselves in the Sahul (Australia and New Guinea), before the arrival of the first Homo sapiens in Australia. Flores Man, present on the island of Flores in Indonesia since at least 700,000 years Before Present (AP), is not known outside Flores. Genetic research has revealed partial hybridization between the first Homo sapiens to arrive in the region and Denisova Man, who probably populated much of eastern Asia before the arrival of modern humans. This research also shows a possible weak hybridization of East Asian Homo sapiens with another as yet unidentified local human species. Around 70,000 years ago, insular Southeast Asia was not the archipelago it is today, but a continental shelf, the Sunda plateau, a peninsular extension of the Asian continent. Australia's shoreline extended much further into the Timor Sea. Australia and New Guinea, linked by a land bridge across the Arafura Sea, the Gulf of Carpentaria, and Torres Strait, formed a single landmass called Sahul, which also encompassed Tasmania. Between Sunda and Sahul lay an archipelago that geographers call Wallacea, the eastern part of Indonesia. At that time, it was possible to travel from Sunda to Sahul without having to cross more than 100 km of sea. The Peopling of Sunda The first migrations of Homo sapiens to Sunda and Wallacea are poorly understood, and are thought to date back at least 60,000 years. Today's Negrito populations testify to the fact that an ancient population layer, now marginalized and submerged by Austronesian farmers, settled in Sunda. It also spread further afield, as these populations, now relict, also live in the Andaman Islands and the Philippines. The Negritos are probably the oldest modern humans in Southeast Asia (along with the Ainus of Japan, the Hmong-Mien, and the ancient Qiang of Tibet), with the ancestors of these groups settling in the region at least 70,000 years ago. A 2007 genetic analysis concluded that the "settlement of Australia and Papua New Guinea by modern humans was carried out by a single group of people who remained in substantial or total isolation until recent times. The finding would rule out hypotheses about later waves of migration [...]. The Aboringal peoples of Australia and the inhabitants of Papua New Guinea would be the descendants of a single founding population". Other recent genetic evidence from Aboriginal Australians and Papuans also suggests that these peoples originated from a common ancestral population, eventually diverging in their respective genetic groups after an initial bottleneck, with little evidence of subsequent gene flow. Humans are thought to have sailed between the Wallacea and the Sahul, then diffused across the continent. According to excavations at the Warreen Cave site, humans arrived in Tasmania, then linked by a land bridge to Australia, around 35,000 years ago. "At the same time, the few dozen kilometers separating the Bismarck Archipelago from Sahul were crossed: New Britain and New Ireland were reached, and then, one hundred and sixty kilometers away, the Buka Island in the north of the Solomon Archipelago: a true 28,000-year-old feat. Finally, to close the first phase in the settlement of Oceania, Manus Island (Admiralty Islands), 240 km north of the Bismarcks, was inhabited by Oceanians 12,000 years ago". By this date (12,000 B.C.), the expansion of first-wave settlers seems to have ceased. The Solomon Islands, just south of Buka Island, remained untouched by human occupation. "In the present state of knowledge, there is a time gap of more than eight millennia before the race towards the ocean is resumed". In contrast, Aboriginal Australians remained hunter-gatherers, as geoclimatic conditions were less favorable to agriculture, with a highly irregular rainfall pattern. == The Austronesian wave ==

Asian origins 6,000 years ago (circa 4000 BC), millet-and rice-growing coastal dwellers from southern China began crossing the Strait to settle in Taiwan. Their descendants, still speaking Austronesian languages, are today's Taiwanese Indigenous peoples. Around 2500 BC, migrations took place from Taiwan to the Philippines. Throughout the 20th century, various excavations uncovered further examples of this pottery throughout the western Pacific (or Near Oceania), including the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Wallis and Futuna, and as far as Samoa. It has been generally considered that the Lapita were Austronesian speakers from Asia since all the populations in these areas currently speak Austronesian languages. The pottery is also seen as a sign that the Austronesians who populated Polynesia had spent a long time on the Melanesian islands, since Lapita pottery is common to both areas, and Melanesia is the older of the two. However, whether this type of pottery was directly brought by immigrants (and therefore initially developed outside the Lapita zone) or whether it was developed locally remains a subject of debate among experts, with some authors even defending a totally or partially non-Austronesian origin, within the pre-Austronesian cultures of Melanesia. Lapita pottery is, however, linked to traces of agriculture or tools whose counterparts are found in Southeast Asia, which argues in favor of Austronesian speakers. This is why some researchers have suggested that the inhabitants of remote Oceania did not pass through (or did not stay there for long) what is traditionally called Melanesia, but migrated further north, via the Philippines and Micronesia. However, current data, particularly genetic, suggest a long passage of Polynesians through the islands of Melanesia. As they advanced south and east, the Austronesians of the Lapita culture brought with them more than just pottery. They also brought numerous plants and animals. They were "undoubtedly talented horticulturists. They began to enrich the poor islands of the southwest Pacific with plants transported over generations from South-East Asia and New Guinea: yams, various araceae, breadfruit, sugar cane...". Linguistics and migration routes Austronesian languages, as currently classified by linguists, give a picture of the migration routes followed. The island's fragmentation explains the large number of languages recorded −1,200 to 1,300- but these are grouped into families or sub-families, indicating migratory movements from common regional centers. It is important to note, however, that these linguistic origins do not necessarily overlap with biological origins, as the same language can be adopted by groups of distinct origins. Some strong similarities between Austronesian languages may also be areal (acquired through long contact in a common area) and not genetic (linked to a single origin within a recent sub-group). For these reasons, the grouping of languages into subgroups within the Austronesian family is sometimes the subject of debate among linguists. At the most basic level, these languages are today divided into two groups: the languages of Taiwan, and the Malayo-Polynesian languages. The latter range from the Philippines to Madagascar, from Malaysia to Easter Island, and include virtually all Austronesian languages on record. Within the Malayo-Polynesian group, the languages of Insulinde (Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines) are the most numerous. The languages of Madagascar are included in the Barito language subgroup of Kalimantan (Indonesia), These distributions show that the linguistic groupings are far from corresponding to the traditional subdivisions of Austronesian Oceania: Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. Not only do these languages spill over onto the coasts of New Guinea but they also cross these groupings, with some Melanesian languages (the Polynesian exclaves) belonging to the Polynesian language group. This subdivision, proposed by Dumont d'Urville in 1831, is now scientifically outdated. Nevertheless, Melanesia is the matrix of Oceanic languages. It is in this region, and on the Neo-Guinean coasts close to it, that the greatest number of languages and linguistic groups are found, a diversification that seems a good marker of the antiquity of Malayo-Polynesian speakers in this area. This clue is also correlated with archaeology, as the first Lapita cultivators (considered Austronesian) first settled in this region. According to Patrick Kirch and Roger Green, the Lapita in Samoa, Tonga, Wallis and Futuna differentiated themselves from their Fijian neighbors, developing their language, Proto-Polynesian, the ancestor of all Polynesian languages. It was from this area that Polynesia was first settled. Mixture of 1st wave and 2nd wave populations The first interbreeding took place in the Philippines and continued along the route taken by Austronesian farmers and sailors. In Sunda Genetic analysis of Negrito populations in ancient Sunda and neighboring regions (Philippines) shows a certain level of interbreeding. It is based on nineteenth-century racial and ethnic stereotypes (black skin versus copper skin; "frizzy" or "woolly" hair versus "wavy" hair; "Melanesian cannibal" versus "good Polynesian savage"...), which are now outdated because they are unscientific. "the ancestors of the Polynesians were originally from Asia / Taiwan, but they did not cross Melanesia quickly; rather, they mixed extensively with the Melanesians, leaving behind their genes [in the Melanesians], and incorporating many Melanesian genes before colonizing the Pacific". These cross-influences were quantified by studying the genes of "400 Polynesians from 8 island groups, compared with over 900 people from populations [...] in Melanesia, South and East Asia and Australia, using the Y chromosome (NRY) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)". The Y chromosome is inherited from the father, and therefore provides information on the genetic origin of the male founders of a population, while mitochondrial DNA, inherited from the mother, provides information on the genetic origin of the female founders of a population. Thus, in the sample of 400 Polynesians, 65.8% of Y chromosomes (male) are Melanesian, 28.3% are Asian and 5.9% are undetermined by the study. In very reverse order, the mitochondrial DNA (of female origin) of the Polynesian individuals in the study is 6% of Melanesian origin, 93.8% of Asian origin, and 0.2% of undetermined origin28. In addition to the long passage of speakers of Austronesian languages from Asia through Melanesia before colonizing Polynesia, these data also suggest "a high degree of mixing among Polynesians, with more Melanesian men than women, perhaps due to the matrilocal residence [the man goes to live with his wife] ancestral to Polynesian society". The presence of dingoes across Southeast Asia and Australia is intriguing. Dingoes, a type of feral dog, are found throughout the region, from Thailand to New Guinea, following a path similar to some Austronesian migrations. However, the exact timeline of their arrival in Australia remains unclear. While it's possible sporadic contact between mainland Australia and Southeast Asia could have facilitated their introduction, other explanations exist. Fossil evidence suggests that dingoes arrived in Australia around 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, and spread to all parts of the Australian continent and its islands, with the exception of Tasmania. These dates coincide with those of the arrival of Austronesian navigators in the Indonesia-New Guinea area. But while Dingo demonstrates probable contacts, these had no known demographic, cultural or linguistic influence. The advance eastwards to Polynesia Genetic studies seem to demonstrate that "Fiji played a crucial role in the history of Polynesia: humans probably first migrated to Fiji, and the subsequent colonization of Polynesia probably originated there for around seven centuries, in the 1st millennium BC, they shared a common culture and spoke the same language, proto-Polynesian. This was the birth of Polynesian culture and the beginning of migration to Eastern Polynesia. Reasons for eastward migration Researchers wondered what could have driven these populations from Melanesia ever further eastwards, even though the prevailing winds and currents were against them. The Austronesian migration, spanning over 3,000 years, was a slow and deliberate process due to prevailing headwinds. However, these winds weren't entirely unwelcome. Their double-hulled canoes, known as waʻa kaulua or vaʻa pahi, were impressive sailing vessels (according to oral tradition and archaeological evidence). These boats, capable of holding up to fifty passengers, were limited in provisions. However, sailing against the wind offered a crucial advantage: if they missed land, they could return home relatively quickly with the tailwind at their backs. This ability to retreat and resupply proved essential for navigating the vast Pacific Ocean. The disadvantage of sailing with a headwind also needs to be weighed up in the light of experiments carried out on board replicas. These show that while the pahi did indeed sail very poorly against the wind, they were very comfortable sailing on the beam. Given the direction of the prevailing winds, particularly the south-easterly trade winds, it's easy to imagine either zigzag crossings or crossings at 70 or 80 degrees to the wind. Upwind sailing was therefore perfectly possible, albeit slowed by the need to sail with crosswinds. According to New Zealand ethnologist Elsdon Best, the wind was not the only means of propulsion for these boats, and its contrary regime was therefore not prohibitive. "Although sails were used by Māori navigators, paddling was the most common method". The Society Islands were not reached until around 300 AD and served as a dispersal area. This dispersal took place northwards (the Hawaiian Islands reached around 500), eastwards (Easter Island reached around 900), and southwards (New Zealand reached around 1100). In the Far East, beyond Easter Island, it is now accepted that the Polynesians reached South America. The sweet potato, a perennial plant native to this continent (or possibly Central America), is found throughout Polynesia, where it has been cultivated for some 5,000 years. The Quechua term for sweet potato, qumar, is thus close to that used in most Polynesian languages ('ūmara in Tahitian, kumara in Māori, umala in Samoan, etc.). In 2007, archaeologists on the Pacific coast of South America (in Chile) also found chicken bones that predate the arrival of Europeans, and whose genetic analysis clearly shows their kinship with Polynesian chicken lines. Chickens are native to South Asia and did not live in America. For a long time, it was thought that Europeans had brought the chicken to America, which is true outside the areas of contact with Polynesians. While these contacts had an impact on the agriculture and breeding of both populations, the existence of Amerindian settlements probably did not allow the establishment of Austronesian colonies. Intermediate migration hypothesis (12,000 / 8,000 A.P.) Several hypotheses, little developed to date by scientific research due to the absence of archaeological traces and convincing linguistic data, suggest the possibility of intermediate waves. These could have been migrations between the aboriginal and Austronesian settlements, from which the Papuan populations would have descended, or a first wave of Asian migrations, predating the Austronesian ones, whose beginning is now dated to around 6,000 years ago. However, this thesis is still based on purely genetic dating, which is often imprecise and is not yet clearly supported by archaeological evidence. Megalithism There are a good number of megalithic sites, including Haʻamonga ʻa Maui, Langi, Leluh, Moaï, Nan Madol, Odalmelech, and Latte stone. == Austronesian sailing ==

We know nothing about the navigation techniques of the settlers of the first wave of colonization, except that they must have existed. Indeed, settlement of the Sahul and New Guinea islands was achieved by crossing seas, such as the Wallacea. Indeed, such distances and the very low density of land in the Pacific seemed to make successful voyages unlikely. To find an island, navigation by chance is largely insufficient. The Oceanians therefore developed a highly sophisticated navigational science. Pirogues As Elsdon Best pointed out in 1925, "some of the types of vessel used by the older generations have long since disappeared, and no descriptions of them exist". The author notes, however, that the vessels identified by the first Europeans in the region were of three types: single-hulled pirogues, double-hulled pirogues (catamaran), and single-hulled outrigger pirogues (Proa). Single-hulled pirogues seem ill-suited to the high seas. Indeed, the absence of a keel makes them highly unstable in the event of waves or crosswinds, which can capsize them. Still in use, they are mainly used for river fishing, in the lagoon, or just beyond. Catamarans and proas can be used to replace the missing keel, preventing the pirogues from capsizing in heavy seas or crosswinds. Praos are relatively fragile, however, and don't seem to have been used for offshore sailing. It seems that large catamarans, made up of two large pirogues joined, were the dominant means of offshore navigation for the Austronesians, at least in historical times. Māori oral tradition recalls a fleet of 13 large double pirogues at the origin of the settlement of New Zealand. However, Best does not rule out other traditions that speak of ocean crossings in single pirogues or outrigger canoes. The largest were covered by a deck "joined to the body of the pirogue by ligatures Huts could be built on the decks of catamarans, and there is a Tahitian term for such a construction: farepora. with India, the Middle East, and China, but these archipelagos are not part of Oceania in the strict sense. Australia was not part of any discernible Austronesian trade network until modern times, although the presence of dingoes attests to some limited contacts with the outside world. New Guinea is broadly in the same situation, although some coastal regions traded regularly with neighboring Melanesian islands, and today often speak Austronesian rather than Papuan languages. More locally, however, Papuans and Australian Aboriginals have traded across the Torres Strait islands, where their populations mingled (some islands are Papuan-speaking, others are Aboriginal-speaking, with an Austronesian The islands of Oceania proper (Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia) experienced different situations. The more outlying islands, such as New Zealand and Easter Island, don't seem to have taken part in trade networks after their colonization. The more central islands participated in local networks (within archipelagos) or more general ones (between archipelagos), as evidenced by archaeological traces. But even more than trade, the great oceanic fleets enabled the constitution of empires. For example, "the power of the Tonga monarchy reached its apogee in the thirteenth century. At that time, the chiefdoms exercised political influence as far afield as Samoa". This empire, the Tuʻi Tonga Empire, centered on "the island of Tongatapu led to the gradual occupation of the majority of the islands of Western Polynesia, with the imposition of Tongan governors and new chiefs". In Polynesia itself, "the tradition of inter-island voyages [in fact, beyond the archipelagos] was lost by Cook's time [late 18th century]; but the geographical knowledge then expressed by a priest of the Society Islands proves that their memory was still alive. On his first voyage in 1769, Cook took on board Tupaia, a priest from Raiatea (Leeward Islands). Although he had only traveled within the Society archipelago, Tupaia was able to name 130 islands and place 74 of them on a map: to the west of the Society archipelago, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga are still in doubt, but to the east, part of the Marquesas and the Tuamotus can surely be recognized on Tupaia's map. Tupaia ignored Hawaii (then unknown to J. Cook), Easter Island, and New Zealand. Throughout his voyages with Cook, much to everyone's astonishment, Tupaia was able to point in the direction of the Society Archipelago, but he never explained how he did it". == Oceania settlement, fauna and flora ==

The settlement of Oceania was not just a human movement. It was also a movement of animals and, above all, plants, brought by settlers, more or less voluntarily. The first wave of settlers had no notable influence. They were hunter-gatherers who brought with them neither plants nor domesticated animals. Second-wave Austronesian settlers, on the other hand, were herders and horticulturists and brought with them plants and animals. Many of the Pacific islands were very isolated, with little diversity of flora and fauna. "More than reaching the tiny lands of the Great Ocean, it was difficult to thrive there: indeed, they were devoid of almost everything. It was indeed the Polynesians who, by transporting more than eighty plants over ten thousand kilometers, transformed them into as many "New Cytheras". sugarcane, banana, June plum, pandanus, Cordyline fruticose, candlenut, giant taro. With the plants also came animals, such as chickens, another native of Southeast Asia, along with the first mammals. Indeed, "there are no indigenous mammals in Polynesia. All were introduced voluntarily or involuntarily by man. Dogs and pigs were brought by the first Polynesians during their migrations, along with rats in the bottom of their pirogues". Some introductions had negative effects. For example, the dingo, introduced into Australia 3,500 to 4,000 years ago, seems to have had a detrimental impact on certain Australian animals (such as its potential competitors, the thylacine (marsupial wolf) and the Tasmanian devil), causing them to regress or even disappear. While almost all the plants and animals brought by the Austronesians logically came from their native Southeast Asia, there is one exception: the sweet potato. This is clearly of South or Central American origin. However, "charred remains of tubers [...] have [...] been discovered in the soil of a habitat dating from the 10th century in Mangaia (Cook Islands)", and by the time Westerners arrived, the tuber was a widespread food throughout Polynesia. This exception attests to the fact that Polynesian navigators reached South America long ago (even before the year 1000) and brought the sweet potato back with them. == Discontinued theories ==

From the end of the 18th century onwards, the question of the settlement of Oceania gave rise to many theories, now abandoned. The sunken continent One of the first explanations given for the settlement of Oceania was the existence of a sunken continent, the "Pacifide", the mythical counterpart of Atlantis. According to this theory, the Oceanians were the descendants of the inhabitants of a continent that has now disappeared, of which only a few peaks remain: the Pacific islands. This theory was first formulated by James Forster, the naturalist on James Cook's third circumnavigation. It was later taken up by the Belgian-French Jacques-Antoine Moerenhout in his Voyage aux îles du grand océan (1837). After 1926, Colonel James Churchward popularized it in a different form and under a different name in a book entitled The Lost Continent of Mu, in which this eccentric military man even attempted to map this imaginary continent, which he gave a Polynesian name: Mu Ra Roa (mu: variety of fish; ra: deictic expressing distance in time; roa: large). In Polynesia, islands are often named after fish (e.g. Te ika a Maui, the Māori name for New Zealand's North Island). The book was so successful that the author published two sequels, also translated into French: ''Les Enfants de Mu, and L'Univers secret de Mu'' The myth of the lost tribe of Israel The "lost tribe of Israel" is one of the many nineteenth-century hypotheses about the region's settlement. This was the case, for example, of the Reverend Richard Taylor in Te Ika a Maui, or New Zealand and its Inhabitants (1855), and of the Briton Godfrey Charles Mundy, who spent several months in New Zealand in the 1840s. He writes: "It is said that many of their customs, civil and religious, correspond to a remarkable degree with those of the Jews. The facial features of many Māori bear a strong resemblance to those of the ancient race, the same exorbitant, shining eye, the same coarse, aquiline nose, and the same fine, sensuous mouth. (...) Are the Māori descended from one of the lost tribes of Israel? In this description, we find all the archetypes of traditional Jewish imagery, the "aquiline nose", the "exorbitant, shining eye" and so on. However, this myth was also claimed by the Māori themselves through the syncretic Te Nakahi movement, whose leaders such as Papahurihia, later known as Te Atua Wera or Wero, claimed descent from Moses. First reported in the Bay of Islands in July 1833, then later in Hokianga (in the far north of New Zealand), the birth of Te Nakahi coincided with the multiplication of the first Māori baptisms. Blending Old Testament precepts (observance of the Jewish Shabbat) with ancestral Māori rites, its followers saw in this affiliation with the Hurai (Jews in Māori), the affirmation of an identity undermined by the missions. This cult also had a major influence on the Hōne Heke revolt in the north of the country and the Māori royalist movement of the 1850s, with the first Māori king Potatau Te Wherowhero claiming descent from the last kings of Israel. The Indo-European origins of the Oceanians Another major hypothesis on the origin of Polynesians (there was little interest in Melanesians at the time) appeared in 1885. It was the work of Abraham Fornander, who postulated the Indo-European origin of the Polynesians. In volume 3 of Account of the Polynesian Race, devoted to what was then known as philology, in other words the study of languages, he attempted to demonstrate the existence of phonetic and syntactic coincidences between Polynesian and Indo-European languages. This was the peak of Indo-European research. The same year, 1885, saw the publication of another work entitled Aryan Maori, in which author Edouard Tregear was even more precise in his demonstration. According to him, an Aryan population settled between the Caspian Sea and the northern slopes of the Himalayas split into two groups 4,000 years ago. One headed west to settle in Western Europe, the other south via Persia and India. From there, some would have continued further east to Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands. Tregear wished to demonstrate a common origin between the British settlers and the Maori populations. His work was strongly criticized from the outset, for the weakness of the arguments put forward, and then in the 1970s as reflecting an ethnocentric and colonialist ideology presenting Polynesians as "white savages" who could easily be assimilated into Western culture American settlement In the 1950s, a young Norwegian doctoral student, Thor Heyerdahl, postulated a Native American origin for the Polynesians. He based his theory on many points: • Firstly, there were climatic reasons. It was simpler for these travelers to follow the prevailing winds, which in this area blow from east to west than to go against them, as navigators from Asia would have to do; • A certain amount of archaeological data also seems to support this view. Lithic tools reminiscent of those of the Oceanians have been found on South American sites; • Finally, the sweet potato is found throughout the Pacific, and ethnobotany has demonstrated its American origin. Heyerdahl also drew on the oral traditions of the peoples of America and Polynesia. Heyerdahl and five crew members, including Bengt Danielsson, attempt to reach Tahiti from Peru on the Kon-Tiki raft, to demonstrate that Inca rafts, built from balsa, a porous wood, are capable of withstanding the high seas and making a crossing of several thousand nautical miles. Barely halfway across the journey, the balsa was so saturated with water that a piece, detached by the crew from a submerged section, sank. The use of balsa for such journeys is not without risk (The Kon Tiki Expedition, chapter IV, "trunks soak up water"). The Kon-Tiki expedition struggled to reach Raroia in the Tuamotu Islands. Today, everyone agrees that there was contact between the Oceanians and the Amerindian populations of the South American continent (proven by the presence of the American sweet potato in Polynesia (or even by that of Polynesian chickens in South America if this 2007 discovery is definitively confirmed), but no one questions the Asian origin of the populations of the Pacific and Melanesia, as proven by modern linguistics, population genetics and ethnobotany. Today, therefore, it is assumed that traces of prehistoric contact were left by Polynesian navigators in South America, and not by South Americans in Oceania. == Annexes ==

Bibliography General works • • • • • • • • Austronesians • • • Lapita • • • • • • Polynesia • • Other • • • == References and notes ==

References Notes == See also ==