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”Tikopia” of the Lapita Voyage Project / Rabaul (Papua New Guinea)
Photo – Lapita Voyage Project

Earliest Polynesian People / Lapita Culture Moves East

Polynesian history has fascinated the western world since Pacific cultures were first contacted by European explorers in the late 18th century. Where did this extraordinary culture originate, and how did it travel the vast Pacific Ocean to establish settlements on nearly every island that could support a self sufficient community? These are ‘big’ historical questions and only recently have some answers emerged. Let us travel thousands of miles, from island to island in Oceania, all the while looking down on the ground for unusual pottery fragments with human faces.

Polynesians peoples are united by common language, culture and distinctive genetics. Polynesians emerged from an ancient Austronesian culture that took to seafaring by 3,000 B.C. Austronesians in turn, are descended from indigenous peoples on Taiwan who derive from Chinese mainland tribals who first crossed to Taiwan by ~5,000 B.C. These indigenous tribes of Taiwain were immediately on the move and traveled to the western islands of Oceania and Melanesia. Mitochondrial DNA studies have recently confirmed the ancestral relationship between aboriginal peoples on Taiwan and Polynesians.

Lapita / Fiji – earliest pot shards > c.1900 B.C.
Photo – Fiji Museum

The Lapita Culture is sometimes identified as the earliest ancestral Polynesian culture. Lapita is believed to have originated on the islands of South East Asia, perhaps in the Moluccas and Indonesia as some archeology indicates. One of the earliest, securely dated sites with Lapita Pottery is dated to 1650 B.C and is on Nissan in the Bismark Archipelago. The earliest detectable migrations of the Lapita are on the islands of the Bismark Archipelago in Near Oceania which were settled c. 1500 B.C.

Remote_Oceania Map
Map – Lapita Voyage Project

Moving rapidly in small groups, the Lapita people penetrated Remote Oceania, then traveled to Fiji and West Polynesia from Melanesia between 1200 and 1,000 B.C. Their ocean voyaging traversed remarkable mileage. In no more than 10 generations, they reached Tonga and Samoa by 1,000 B.C.

This is the ‘express train’ model for Polynesian origins and their first expansion into Western Polynesia. There is no evidence that overcrowding was the motivation for these voyages and the establishment of new settlements. Communities on different islands remained in contact. Lapita lived in villages on islands larger than 1,000 sq km or on the coasts of larger islands. There is evidence throughout Polynesian history that clans might be forced into exile if a) they lost a regional war and the victors were inclined to be magnanimous; or b) the chiefs ruling the island made a harsh decision to balance population with food supply derived from agriculture, hunting and fishing. In this circumstance, a clan might voluntarily agree to leave the island or be forced into exile.

Lapita pottery fragments with human face / Main Reef Island, NW Solomon Islands, c.1100 B.C.
Photo – Depart. Anthropology Photographic Archive, University of Auckland

Lapita Culture, the Human Face and the Green Turtle

The rapid movement of the Lapita people eastward, with short residency times on each of the island locations they reached (until migration stopped in the region of the most eastward of the Solomon Islands), is known as the ‘express train hypothesis’. It is currently favored by anthropologists over the alternative which proposes a leisurely move eastward with long resident times on each new island before a group decided to once again ‘go over the horizon’. In this model, completion of Lapita eastward expansion would take a much longer period of time than that proposed by express train model, and the timeline does not fit the archeological evidence as well.

Lapita agriculture included taro, yam, breadfruit, banana, and coconut. Domestic animals raised for food were chickens, dogs and pigs, although their remains are not common in Lapita archeological excavations. If there is a distinctive Polynesian chicken, its origins lie with the Lapita people. The Lapita were accomplished fishermen and hunters who extinguished several endemic island species of flightless birds and large reptiles.

Lapita Bowl/Face – Tarawa Atoll / Kiribati
Photo – John Terrell / Lapita Gallery

Lapita Culture is distinctive, first and foremost because of the pottery style that emerged in the Bismark Archipelago that is like no other of the time and region. Lapita pots are low temperature earthenware which in addition to the expected functional jars and bowls, included highly decorated bowls with pedestal feet and flat-bottomed dishes and jars with flaring rims. Stylized faces are easily recognized and remarkable. Incised and sculpted designs included abstractions of the human face, eyes, nose, arms and fingers. Pots with complex designs may have been used in ritual exchanges between clans.

Green Turtle at Coral Reef / Hawaii
Photo – Mila Zinkova & Keta / Wikipedia

Lapita faces on pottery are usually taken to be human faces that might indicate ancestor worship, but there is another interpretation that is possible. John Terrell of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago has found striking similarities between the design elements in Lapita decorative motifs, and anatomical features of the Green Sea Turtle such as the carapace and markings behind the eye. Terrell and colleagues propose that a creation myth has been recorded within this Lapita iconography, although identification of who did what, and when, eludes us.

We may never recover the specific metaphysics and mythic adventures. However, consistent symbolism and iconography within their very distinctive art style allows us to identify the Lapita over an island realm spanning more than 4,000 km. Later Polynesian peoples were not potters because wood had become the preferred material for bowls and jars. Lapita iconography survived, nonetheless, in ritual decoration on bark cloth (tapa) and in tattoo design.

Lapita Voyage Project / November 2008 – March 2009 Route
Map – Lapita Voyage Project

The Lapita Pottery Trail

The principals of the Lapita Voyage Project are Klaus Hympendahl, a German author, explorer and sailorn James Wharram, a ship architect specializing in sailing catamarans, and Hanneke Boon who is Wharram’s design partner. As archeologists follow Lapita pottery eastward from the Philippines, they follow the migration of the Lapita Culture until it reached the eastern margin of Remote Oceania and beyond to Fiji, Samoa and New Caledonia.

The Lapita Voyage Project was created with two objectives to fulfill. 1. Build two Polynesian, double hulled canoes that would be true to ancient Solomon Island Polynesian canoe design. These canoes would not be designed according to strict historical standards because there is no Solomon Island ship builder now alive who can build a large, ocean going canoe according to traditional designs. 2. Sail these canoes along a 4,000 mile route that is a good approximation to that believed used by the Lapita Culture during their period of rapid expansion.

These canoes would incorporate design principles from the Solomon Islands of Anuta and Tikopia where traditional Polynesian canoe design survived untouched by western influence into the 1970s with small fishing canoes. Large ocean going canoes were built until about 1940. Examples of both survive for close study. Tikopia, and its smaller sister island of Anuta, are two of the most isolated islands in the world and are good representatives for target islands at the eastern margin of Lapita expansion in the first millennium B.C.

Anuta Island (March 2009) / Solomon Islands
Photo – Lapita Voyage Project

Anuta

Anuta is a small volcanic island with a coral reef fringe that is only 750 meters wide. The highest point on the ancient, eroded volcano remnant of Anuta is 213’ above sea level. Anuta has a permanent population of 232 (2006) of which 200 live in the village of Mau. There is a small, uninhabited island 36 miles distant that is used for agriculture. Unlike most people of the Solomon Islands, the people of Anuta are Polynesians and their language belongs to the Samoan group of Polynesian languages.

The western world first contacted Anuta in 1791 and Christianity arrived in 1916 with Anglican missionaries. The only scheduled contact with the outside world in the 21st century is the irregular visits of a supply ship maintained by the government of the Solomon Islands that visits the outer islands. In addition, regional cargo and fishing ships and private yachts occasionally visit. Men will leave the island to become wager earners elsewhere in the Solomon Islands, often for long periods of time.

The Anuta are well aware of their country and much of Polynesia beyond the Solomon Islands. Their individual, family and community ethical system is something the larger world would do well to emulate. “Concern for others is the backbone of Anutan philosophy. ‘Aropa’ is a concept for giving and sharing, roughly translated as compassion, love and affection.” (Source #4)

Lapita “Anuta” arrives at Anuta Island, March 2009
Photo – Lapita Voyage Project Archives

A natural spring provides high quality fresh water. Anuta agriculture grows taro, manioc and bananas with a thorough understanding of the need for intensive crop rotation. Gardens are often situated on hill tops. Coconut palm, turmeric and sugar cane are also grown and tended. Anuta do not now raise domestic animals. Assuredly pigs, chickens and dogs were embedded in the food economy of their Lapita ancestors but the very small size of Anuta precluded the ‘luxury’ of growing food for domestic animals, even if they were to be consumed.

December 28-29, 2002, record-setting Category 5 Cyclone Zoe with winds gusting to 340 km/hr passed over the eastern Solomon Islands and hit Anuta and Tikopia. There were no fatalities on either island. On Anuta, 29/75 houses were damaged, but only four suffered serious damage. (What does this tell us about Polynesian house construction ?!) Most swamp taro ‘fields’ were destroyed and perhaps 70% of all agriculture was mangled. No one starved because a reserve food supply made from manioc was regularly buried in maa pits as insurance food that was only to be used when a catastrophe happened.

Fishing Boat Fleet on Anuta Island
Photo – Lapita Voyage Project Archives

Much old tradition has survived on Anuta but no large ocean going canoes have been built since the 1970s, and the boat building expertise to do so may have been lost. The scarcity of large logs may have been the critical deficit. Small canoes used for fishing offshore are built with an ancient traditional design no longer found elsewhere in Polynesia. The small Anuta community has 70 fishing canoes and, as expected, the Anuta are expert fisherman.

Tikopia / Lake Te Roto / crater lake
Photo – Lapita Voyage Project Archives

Tikopia

Eighty-three miles southwest of Anuta lies the larger sister island of Tikopia, which is also Polynesian in culture and language. (Most Solomon Islands are Melanesian.) Tikopia is larger than Anuta with an area of 5 km2 (1.8 m2). The summit of the extinct volcano – Mt. Reani – is 380 meters (1247 ft) above sea level. Lake Te Roto near the coast fills an old volcanic crater to a depth of 80 meters. the population of Tikopia is about 1200 and there are at least 20 villages along the coast. The nearest island is Anuta, 85 miles distant. Several islands in Vanuatu and the Solomons are 100 to 140 miles away. As with Anutan, Tikopian belongs to the Samoan branch of Polynesian languages.

Tikopia Canoes 1933
Photo – Templeton Crocker Expedition, 1933

The first settler on Tikopia found a forested island, 72% the size of today’s Tikopia. The crater lake was open to the sea and its reef was rich with food fish. The offshore coral reef was large. This first Tikopian culture is known as Kiki and it practiced slash and burn agriculture which decimated the forest. Birds, fish and shallow ocean food animals were hunted intensively. Pigs, chickens, perhaps dogs and accidentally the Polynesian rat were also introduced.

The earliest pottery on Tikopia is Lapita. Ancient trade networks and ocean travel are revealed by the presence of stone adzes and chert from the main Solomon Islands, obsidian from the Bismark Archipelago of Papua New Guinea, and volcanic glass from the Banks Islands in Vanuatu.

About 0 A.D. the Kiki Culture was replaced by the dramatically different Sinapupu Culture. A new style of pottery called Mangaasi is imported from Vanuatu, probably from the island of Santo. Turtles, sharks and rays disappear from the menu, likely because of a new tabu. There is a widespread disappearance of Lapita pottery in the western Pacific at this time on Santa Cruz and the Reef Islands, Tonga, Samoa, and Futuna. Invasive Mangasi is documented not only on Tikopia and Vanikoro, but also in New Caledonia. In other areas of the western Pacific, pottery making stops altogether.

Lapita Type B pot / Malo Island, New Hebrides
Photo – janesoceania

On Tikopia, the Mangasi lasts about 1,000 years during which there is an increasing reliance on domestic pigs. Erosion and forest clearance are dramatic; sand dunes enlarge and add to the island area. What is impossible to determine is the relationship between the Mangaasi pottery style and people. Was this a new pottery style adopted by the resident population with little if any genetic input from new arrivals because they were so few in number? Or, does this transition represent a quiet invasion and residency in large numbers by a new people with their new cultural forms?

About 1200 A.D., the Tuakamali culture phase emerges and the distinctive Tikopian Mangaasi culture will soon appear. Tuakamali appears to be the culture of colonists from the western Pacific. Mangaasi pottery ceases to be made in Vanuatu and therefore ceases to be traded and imported into Tikopia.

Tikopia / Huts at Crater Lake / Swamp Taro / Before Cyclone Zoe
Photo – HYOA / Tikopia Relief

Stone architecture and tools from western Polynesia can be identified, as can volcanic glass from Vanuatu and the occasional pig from the nearest Solomon Islands. Lineages on Tikopia now trace their origins to Uvea (Wallis), Samoa and Tonga.

Tikopian villages and population increased. The land area of the island increased, and the salt water bay in the crater was cut off from the sea and transformed into a brackish lake. Villages nearby would have suffered from a serious loss in shallow ocean fish and shellfish. Major (resource?) wars occurred on the island. There is one historical record of clan extinction, and another of a clan driven off island and into exile.

Turtles, sharks and rays are back in the diet, but spiny puffer fish and moray eels are now tabu for eating. Slash and burn agriculture is gone and replaced with the forest gardens we see today that resemble those of New Guinea. The first contact of Tikopia with Europeans was the 1606 Quiros Expedition from Spain which had no discernible influence. European tools began to penetrate in the early 1800s.

Tikopia / Craftsman Using Adz
Photo – Lapita Voyage Project Archives

Around 1600 A.D, the Tikopia decided to slaughter all pigs and no longer raise them because the damage they did to food gardens had become unacceptable. Likely early attempts to accommodate chickens and dogs into the food economy had to be abandoned for the basic reason that survival on this small island did not allow for the luxury of growing food that was fed to animals. The people of Tikopia learned long ago that for their population to be in ecological balance with the island environment, it had to be limited to ~1200. When natural death, war and occasional emigration did not suffice to limit numbers, widespread infanticide was practiced.

Tikopia Chiefs Receive Officers of the “Astrolabe” (France) / 1833
Print – 1st Art Gallery

The chiefs of the four clans on Tikopia rule the island, make decisions for the common good and oversee the canoes. Christianity reached Tikopia with the Melanesian Anglican Mission in 1858, but a mission teacher was not allowed to live on Tikopia until 1907. The chiefs decided upon which Christian sect would be welcome on the island, and the Anglican Church has proved tolerant of tribal tradition. The chiefs do not allow money, shops, alcohol, electricity or electric motors on the island. Medicine and kerosene are among the supplies brought in by the infrequent visits of the government supply ship. There is no air strip for a small plane to land on, and only the largest of military helicopters could reach the island. A nurse lives permanently on Tikopia and there are two beds for patients.

Tikopia / Crater Lake Maximum Breach Damage
Photo – HYOA / Tikopia Relief

Category 5 Cyclone Hits Anuta and Tikopia

Cyclone Zoe in December 2002 did much more damage on Tikopia than on Anuta. There was no loss of human life because villagers hid safely in caves. A village at one edge of the crater lake was leveled and more than 200 houses were destroyed. One of two gravity fed water supply systems suffered serious damage to its dam, large water tank and the loss of all pipeline. Agricultural capacity was brought to a standstill and a layer of topsoil was blown away.

The only food source that survived Zoe was the reef fish. The stone barrier that kept sea water from infiltrating the lake in the old volcanic crater was broken down and proved very difficult to repair; that work was not completed until September 2006. Permanent contamination of this fresh water lagoon would have threatened all the sago palms on the island. Their extinction might have forced a permanent evacuation of all islanders but luck, hard work, generosity from around the world and the gods said otherwise.

Government, private funds and volunteer workers included many yacht crews who had known the island as a good harbor in past years. Upon hearing that Cyclone Zoe made a direct hit on Anuta and Tikopia, yachtsmen from around the world who had visited Tikopia sprung into action and provided major relief funds and supplies.

Tikopia / Crater Lake Barrier Wall Repaired
Photo – HYOA / Tikopia Relief

These most isolated islands would soon have another experience that was unique in their history and one whose consequences would be entirely positive. The second article in this two part series joins the Lapita Voyage Project that followed the Lapita pottery trail upon the Pacific ocean. The voyage replicated a 4,000 mile journey of exploration and settlement. The Lapita Voyage Project would bring a priceless gift to Anuta and Tokipia, a renewed capacity to undertake open ocean voyages and resume canoe travel to neighboring islands.

Sources -
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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