How the Remote Pacific Islands were Settled Thousands of Years Ago

The islands of the Pacific Ocean may be remote, but thousands of years ago they were settled by pioneering humans. Now researchers have analyzed the strategies that these people may have used to settle these islands.

"The colonization of small islands in the vast expanses of the Pacific is one of the most remarkable chapters of human history," write the researchers in a news release. "The fundamental nature of such processes and the decades of research on settlement strategies demand a better analytical approach and data. Here we have demonstrated how we can go beyond the construction of plausible narratives and ad hoc interpretations of archaeological information in order to develop explicit models of different colonization strategies and rigorously test them against the data."

The researchers examined the expansion of the Lapita people, who emerged from Southeast Asia and inhabited the Bismarck and Solomon islands east of New Guinea about 3,500 years ago. Then these people pushed south and east to become the first to settle the remote Pacific. They were the ancestors of many Melanesians, Micronesians and all Polynesians.

The scientists developed a model of how colonization occurred in 24 major island groups. This model was adapted from an epidemiological model of how diseases spread from among people or other animals. The model's variables included island size, distances from other islands, prevalent wind directions and the level of social hierarchy among people living on the island.

The researchers found that there was an outward wave of advance from a central point, like ripples spreading from a rock dropped into a pond. However, it turns out that distance between islands wasn't a factor in whether an island would be settled or not. However, what did play a factor was the height of the islands. High volcanic islands, as an example, have a larger angle of target and are more likely to be spotted.

The researchers found that there was also a second strategy that may have come into play. It's possible that the settlers used a risk-minimizing strategy by heading into the prevailing wind on an outward, exploratory journey, which allowed for safer returned with the wind from failed searches.

"The idea that distance didn't matter for founding early Pacific societies-there is some continuity with today's island societies, where distance is not a big factor in maintaining interactions among close family groups," said Adrian Bell, the senior author of the new study, in a news release.

The findings are published in the journal American Antiquity.

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