Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?

On 9 Jan, 07:02, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Jan 9, 5:28 am, richard01 <richardparke...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On 8 Jan, 13:42, "benli...@xxxxxxxxxx" <benli...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Jan 8, 12:15 pm, richard01 <richardparke...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

The archaeology
hardly gets a mention, though it fails to support either his claim
that Vanuatu and New Caledonia were settled a lot earlier than
Polynesia, nor that Maori left central Polynesia before Rapanui.

It fails to support my claim because no-one has yet found a
definitive
'first settlement date' almost anywhere east of Buka, in the Solomon
Islands.
Not true. Dates for the whole Lapita area have been stable for quite a
while now, even though new sites continue to be discovered. They range
from about 3500 BP in the far west to, I think about 2800 in Samoa.
Check recent surveys by Kirch for the figures. In other words, the
interval between first settlement of Vanuatu/New Caledonia and that of
Fiji/Western Polynesia is probably no more than 2-300 years.

The Lapita phenomenon did indeed happen very fast, but it's been
vastly overblown by archaeologists, who don't have much more than pots
and bits of chipped stone to go by.

What else do archaeologists normally have?

snipped - sorry
Lapita was never claimed to be a technical advance, nor even the first
pottery around. It was simply an easily identifiable style. And east
and south of the Solomons it appears with the first evidence of human
settlement.

Yes, it was. I don't really object to Lapita pottery being used as an
archaeological horizon by archaeologists, but I do object to the idea
that it was the FIRST sign of 'civilisation' anywhere east of Mussau,
the earliest and western-most Lapita site. And to the semi-desperate
effort by Bellwood to connect that to Tapen' keng pottery in Formosa.
And to the semi-automatic tying into that of the idea of proto-
Polynesians whistling down there on their Express Train, hanging about
a bit while they invented better boats to get to Fiji and Samoa, and
then hanging about a bit more while they invented even better boats
to get to Hawai'i, New Zealand and Rapanui, as 'Vikings into the
Sunrise'.

If there are no retrievable archaeological finds in Vanuatu before the
arrival of Lapita pots on certain beaches, then I'm not at all
surprised. The Lapita pots on certain beaches are (could be) no more
than evidence of short-term visitors or short-term settlers. There's
no evidence of any connection between Lapita and Austronesian, except
back-constructs to certain linguistic terms, that were connected
(concocted?) by Pawley and Green in the 70s, and accepted ever since.

The Lapita trail is a very over-simplified story. There's a nice paper
at:
The spread of the 'Lapita people': a demographic simulation - Anne Di
Piazza and Erik Pearthree (1999)
http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/3/4.html
where they end up (almost) stating that the Pacific colonisation must
have been by sea nomads - very different from the proposition of
deliberate colonisation by settled, but over-populated
agriculturalists propagated by the Express Train crowd - Bellwood,
Blust etc.

Sea nomads don't deliberately take cuttings and seeds of their
favourite food plants, or puppies and piglets, or the village potter,
or their whole family, on their voyages.

That, to me at least, sounds like a better explanation of the
Polynesian loss of dogs, pigs, and pots than any other.

And that brings up another ridiculed figure. To quote Andrew Pawley
(pers comm) "Whatever you do, take no notice of Bill Solheim's
maverick attempts at a grand synthesis, which I'm afraid are from
another planet". Obviously - Bill Solheim proposed a very early sea
nomad culture (Nusantao) around Western Indonesia/Philippines/
Formosa , extending to coastal China and the Yayoi in Japan. Maybe he
over-did it his ideas, but not a lot.

regards

Richard
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?
    ... Polynesia, nor that Maori left central Polynesia before Rapanui. ... 'first settlement date' almost anywhere east of Buka, ... Dates for the whole Lapita area have been stable for quite a ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?
    ... Polynesia, nor that Maori left central Polynesia before Rapanui. ... 'first settlement date' almost anywhere east of Buka, ... Dates for the whole Lapita area have been stable for quite a ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?
    ... Polynesia, nor that Maori left central Polynesia before Rapanui. ... 'first settlement date' almost anywhere east of Buka, ... Dates for the whole Lapita area have been stable for quite a ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?
    ... Polynesia, nor that Maori left central Polynesia before Rapanui. ... 'first settlement date' almost anywhere east of Buka, ... Dates for the whole Lapita area have been stable for quite a ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: Do Eskimos count like New Guineans?
    ... Polynesia, nor that Maori left central Polynesia before Rapanui. ... 'first settlement date' almost anywhere east of Buka, ... vastly overblown by archaeologists, who don't have much more than pots ...
    (sci.lang)
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