Is Ancient DNA Research Revealing New Truths — Or Falling Into Old Traps?
The pivotal moment in Pacific archaeological history happened in 1952, when a team of researchers found a cache of dentate-stamped pots at a place called Lapita in New Caledonia, a French collectivity to the southwest of Vanuatu. Along the way, they encountered populations of “Papuans” — a generic shorthand for highly distinct groups of people who had been in the Papua New Guinea region for 40,000 years. Finally, the people now associated with Lapita sailed into the blankness of the open ocean for the first time, crossing the Remote Oceania divide to Vanuatu and, from there, outward to the farthest reaches of the Pacific. Archaeologists differed, often bitterly, on the details, but as Reich describes it in his book, the prevailing opinion was that “the Lapita archaeological culture was forged during a period of intense exchange between people ultimately originating in the farming center of China (via Taiwan) and New Guineans.”
Source: www.nytimes.com