Lapita culture

Something that I was thinking about throughout the whole book is you find parallels between things where normally people aren't drawing those parallels because they aren't thinking big enough to be able to see the parallel.

So when you talk about Mauritius, you also talk at different points in the book about Polynesian expansion into Oceania, right? But to be able to have in your mind at the same time both Mauritius and the Lapita culture of 1500 BC, you have to know a lot of different things for those two things to occur to you as parallels to talk about.

And what I see when I look at these fields, especially at specialists, is not enough of that.

And so how are you going to understand expansion across an island chain without knowing the canonical examples throughout human history of expansion through island chains and the effects on biodiversity? There's just not enough of even considering that that might be a parallel that's worth exploring through space and time.

Around three thousand five hundred years ago, a new culture emerged in the Bismarck Archipelago.

We call them the Lapita people, named after a distinctive style of pottery they created, intricate geometric patterns stamped into clay vessels.

But they were much more than potters.

They were the first true navigators, the first humans who could cross the open ocean, not by luck or desperation, but by skill, by systematic understanding of how the sea works.

All of this knowledge accumulated over generations tested through trial and error, refined by success and failure.

And finally, around three thousand two hundred years ago, they were ready.

The Lapita people began moving east into remote Oceania.

Within just a few centuries, they had colonized Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa.

The story begins around the year 3000 BCE with the Austronesian people who started migrating from Asia.

By 1500 BCE, a group known as the Lapita culture had reached the islands of Melanesia.

So that was over 3,500 years ago.

How did we know they were there?

Archaeologists found their special pottery.

The Lapita made beautiful red clay pots stamped with tiny geometric tooth-like designs.

But their greatest invention wasn't pottery.

It was their boats.