Teouma Lapita cemetery and the DNA of the first Remote Oceanians
Cementerio lapita de Teouma y ADN de los primeros oceánicos remotos
- Date
- c. 1000 BCE (excavado 2004-2010; ADN 2016) · confidence high
- Place
- Teouma, Efate Island, Vanuatu
- Credited to
- Lapita people; excavations by Bedford and Spriggs; genetic study by Skoglund and colleagues
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
The largest known Lapita cemetery preserved skeletons of the first settlers of the remote Pacific islands. Their DNA shows they descended from East Asian populations and were later largely replaced by Papuan ancestry.
The DNA findings (2016, 2018) give new support to the Asian-origin hypothesis for the Lapita; the later partial replacement is dated to about 2,500 years ago.
What it led to
- revision of the origin of the peoples of Vanuatu and remote Melanesia
- genetic evidence of two successive waves of settlement
- models of Austronesian dispersal into Polynesia