Lapita culture

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Lapita refers to the first agriculture and pottery-producing culture (from 1500 BC) in Melanesia and the Polynesian islands of Samoa and Tonga . The culture is named after the eponymous site of Lapita 13 on the Foué Peninsula in New Caledonia , where Edward W. Gifford carried out excavations in 1952.

area

Distribution area of ​​the Lapita culture

After the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, sea levels rose, with the result that the land connection between Australia and New Guinea was interrupted (see also Sahul ). This also lost the cultural connection between the people and they were divided into Aborigines and Papua .

A few thousand years later, people of the Austronesian language family immigrated to New Guinea and on to Melanesia. The main distribution of this language family is in the Malay Archipelago , but also includes Madagascar off the African coast and Melanesia.

The distribution area known today of the Lapita culture includes New Guinea in the northwest, New Caledonia in the south and Samoa in the east. No traces have been found in Australia to this day. So far, more than 100 places with artifacts are known.

Bismarck Archipelago location

The earliest traces of the Lapita culture can be found on the Bismarck Archipelago and can be traced back to the period from 1500 to 1300 BC. To date.

Vanuatu site

Lapita ceramics at the Vanuatu Cultural Center in Port Vila .

On Teouma Beach east of Port Vila on the island of Efate in the island state of Vanuatu , 25 graves with three dozen human skeletons were found among pottery in the Lapita cemetery in Teouma in autumn 2004 . The skulls were either absent or displaced. So three skulls were placed on the chest of a headless man. The pottery is dated to around 1200 BC. Dated and makes the site one of the oldest in the region (comparable to the find in the Sigatoka sand dunes in Fiji).

The research is carried out at the University of Otago , the DNA analysis in Great Britain .

New Caledonia site

The most important site for research into the Lapita culture is the Lapita 13 excavation site on the west coast of the main island of Grande Terre in New Caledonia , where research into the Lapita culture began. At that time, a total of 53 sites were examined and 11 excavated. Before that, pottery shards with the characteristic patterns had been found several times, but this time radiocarbon dating allowed finds to be dated back to 800 BC. To be dated.

colonization

There are several theories about how Oceania was settled and where the people came from. Peter Bellwood, for example, suspects Formosa to be the place of origin.

Another theory is based on the genetic study of the Pacific rat . Since it cannot swim well and does not mix with the rats brought with them by the Europeans, the genetic differences in the mitochondrial DNA of the animals should be able to trace the course of colonization of Oceania.

The research revealed three large groups. The first includes the territory of Indonesia and the Philippines , the second New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and the third the territory of New Caledonia, New Zealand and Polynesia . This shows that the colonization of Oceania probably took place in two steps, with the starting point both times in Indonesia in the area of ​​the island of Halmahera . From there, the islands in the New Guinea area were settled. The second step, the settlement of the islands and Polynesia to the south, turns out to be a complex process. In this third group of the Pacific rat there is a greater differentiation of the mitochondrial DNA. The authors of the study explain this by jumping from one uninhabited island to the next several times, starting from Indonesia. This second settlement of Oceania should be able to be assigned to the bearers of the Lapita culture.

The first human traces on the Bismarck Archipelago are 35,000 years old and those on the Solomon Islands are 29,000 years old. On the other islands it is a maximum of 3500 years.

Another source used to trace the spread of the Lapita culture is pottery. The decorations in particular can serve as an indication of cultural connections between the distant islands.

From the finds three larger uniform areas could be determined: The Far West with the Bismarck Archipelago, the West with the Solomon Islands, New Caledonia and Vanuatu and the East with Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. It is believed that the areas were populated one after the other, from west to east, and that there was no permanent cultural exchange between the islands, which are far apart from each other.

An alternative theory, which is based on a larger number of finds, sees the differences in ceramics not only as a result of the great spatial and thus also cultural distance in the South Pacific , but primarily as a development over time. The earliest finds of the Lapita culture from Fiji in the east are 2800 years old and thus 700 years younger than the oldest finds on the Bismarck Archipelago. According to this theory, after the settlement of a new island, there was a cultural exchange with all other islands and the different ceramic variants are both local characteristics and a result of the cultural change of the entire Lapita culture over the centuries.

Consequences for the animal world

On the Tongan island of 'Eua, southeast of Tongatapu , the biologist David Steadman excavated the bones of flightless and airworthy birds, which are now extinct. Steadman puts forward the thesis that human colonization of the oceanic islands led to the extinction of up to 2000 bird species. These birds mainly belonged to the railing and kingfishers family . Today, of the flightless birds in the island world of Oceania, only the guamralle ( Gallirallus owstoni ), the Micronesian kingfisher and on New Zealand some species such as the kiwifruit , the southern island kahe or the wekaralle and the Henderson (Pitcairn islands) endemic Henderson raven . Steadman assumes that there were no other mammals besides a native rat and that the birds were therefore an important source of food for the carriers of the Lapita culture and the people who followed them, who eventually exterminated them.

description

Characteristic of the Lapita culture is the imprint-decorated pottery with scalp lean . Raw material analyzes support the assumption that these decorated pots were taken on the trips between the islands.

Dogs and chickens were known as domestic animals , and the Pacific rat ( Rattus exulans ) was almost certainly spread as a source of food. Among the cultivated plants are particularly taro ( Colocasia esculenta ) and Dioscorea alata , a plant from the genus yams , the coconut palm , banana and breadfruit .

Polynesians

It is widely believed that the Polynesians are the descendants of the Lapita culture. However, there are other theses that suggest Micronesians and even Indians from North and South America as ancestors .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Richard Stone: Graves of the Pacific's First Seafarers revealed. In: Science . 312, No. 5772, 2006, p. 360, doi : 10.1126 / science.312.5772.360a .
  2. ^ David V. Burley, Robert Shortland: Report on 1998 Field Work Activities Sigatoka Dunes National Park Viti Levu, Fiji. February 1999 (Chapter Sigatoka Sand Dunes Project. )
  3. ↑ Dave Hansford: Headless Skeletons Reveal Secrets of Ancient Islanders. November 2007, National Geographic News
  4. ^ DW Steadman: Biogeography of Tongan birds before and after human impact. In: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . Volume 90, Number 3, February 1993, pp. 818-822, PMID 11607357 , PMC 45761 (free full text).

Web links

  • Lapita pottery. In: Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. March 4, 2009 (pottery shard with face, 1000 BC on the Santa Cruz Islands of the Solomon Islands, texts in English).
  • Headless Skeletons Reveal Ancient Ritual. In: National Geographic News. November 2007 (English, with photos of the finds on Vanuatu).