COMMENTARY

Recalibrating Polynesian prehistory

John Edward Terrell1 Department of Anthropology, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL 60605

he anthropologist Johannes Fabian once famously remarked T that it is difficult to talk about time, and consequently we are given to leaving time to philosophers to ponder and play with as a topic worthy of learned debate (1). However, as the ar- chaeologists Timothy Rieth and Terry Hunt have observed, “a well-established chronology provides the foundation for addressing broader research questions including the evolution of resource use, agricultural strategies, competition and interaction, social complexity, and human- induced environmental impacts” (2). In PNAS (3), Hunt joins his colleagues Wilmshurst, Lipo, and Anderson in showing us what a well-grounded radiocarbon chro- nology for the human colonization of the many scattered islands of East Polynesia looks like. Thereby, they make it obvious that the time has come to rethink how the dis- covery and settlement of these remote and previously uninhabited landfalls in the vast Pacific Ocean came about and why. As these researchers further note, it is now also wise to rethink how rapidly and cata- strophically people, as well as the animals and plants they intentionally or un- intentionally brought with them, may have changed the ecological balance and species diversity of the places they came to see as their new homes. Fig. 1. “The hub of Polynesia, Havai‘i, with its eight radials.” Relying on genealogies and island oral Resolving these seemingly esoteric his- traditions, the Aotearoa New Zealand Maori scholar Peter Buck claimed in 1938 that the settlement of Ra‘iatea (or Havai‘i) and the rest of the Society Islands by early Polynesians happened around the fifth torical issues is more than academically ’ century AD (6). Based on their meta-analysis of 1,434 radiocarbon dates from East Polynesia, Wilmshurst relevant to today s world, in part because et al. suggest instead a date of ∼1025–1120 AD (3). Reprinted from ref. 6. some contemporary scholars have culti- vated a wide and enthusiastic popular following using these same Pacific Island posedly located somewhere in Southeast dispersal continued in one major pulse to societies as the poster children for their Asia or on Formosa (Taiwan). It seemed all remaining islands in this region around views on the role of geography, resource self-evident then, too, that because these A.D. 1190–1290. variation, and subsistence ecology in ancient Polynesian forerunners had dis- Taken in isolation from their broader structuring and predetermining the covered and successfully colonized such geographical and historical contexts, these fl known, or inferred, outcomes of human remote and far- ung places as the findings might appear to lend new weight to history (4, 5). Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Rapa old ideas about Polynesians and how their During much of the last century, it was Nui (Easter Island), they must have been forebears had sailed swiftly from Asia to conventional to say that the Polynesians skillful navigators and brave, adventurous the Pacific not all that many centuries ago. comprise a biological and cultural people, long-distance voyagers—veritable “Vik- Such, however, is not the case. Based on or race, apart from other islanders in ings of the Sunrise,” as the Aotearoa New Oceania. It was generally taken for gran- available radiocarbon dates and associated Zealand Maori scholar Peter Buck called fi ted that the forebears of today’s Poly- them dramatically in his 1938 popular archaeological nds, as Wilmshurst et al. nesians had migrated swiftly out into the book (6) thus titled (Fig. 1). remark, the Tongan and Samoan archi- Pacific already more or less recognizably In their analysis of 1,434 radiocarbon pelagoes in West Polynesia were discov- “Polynesian” in their physical appearance, dates from East Polynesia, Wilmshurst ered and at least partially colonized around ways of speaking, and cultural practices. It et al. suggest that the most reliable short- 2,700–2,900 y ago (7). The neighboring was additionally taken for granted that lived samples indicate strongly that the once these migrants had commenced their colonization of this part of the Pacific extraordinary journey eastward to Poly- happened in two distinct phases: earliest in Author contributions: J.E.T. wrote the paper. nesia, they turned their back on their an- the Society Islands around A.D. 1025– The author declares no conflict of interest. cestral “proto-Polynesian” homeland, 1120, four centuries later than previously See companion article on page 1815. a place somewhat like Shangri-La sup- assumed; subsequently, after 70–265 y, 1E-mail: terrell@fieldmuseum.org.

www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1018804108 PNAS | February 1, 2011 | vol. 108 | no. 5 | 1753–1754 Downloaded by guest on September 28, 2021 325+ islands of the Fijian archipelago im- Polynesia 1,000 or so years ago to jumpstart probabilities (in sequences of events de- mediately to the west of these two island long-distance settlement voyaging eastward scribed as Markovian, it is enough to know chains, which are located more than 7,000 once again. Whatever the causal explana- the present state of a system to predict km off the China coast, were similarly tion, what they report adds weight to what what its future state may be like) (20). first settled by people around 2,950–3,050 y the archaeologist Les Groube proposed It may be entirely human to want to ago (8). What jumps out immediately years ago (14): Polynesians did not come arrange any selected series of events after when these dates for West Polynesia are from anywhere else on the planet. If what the fact of their happening into an orderly set alongside those reported here by Wilmshurst et al. show us is correct, the pattern of one sort or another, chrono- Wilmshurst et al. is the astonishing re- predecessors of today’s Polynesians had logical, cladistic, phylogenetic, or mystical. alization—particularly given how often it plenty of time while resident only in West However, our human capacity to do so has been said that the hypothetical ancient Polynesia to evolve and become “Polyne- (aided nowadays by digital computers) Polynesian migration had been a swift, sian” (whatever you take this phrase to does not guarantee that the people in the fi singular, deliberate, and highly motivated mean) after people had made their rst past who were caught up in the historical — affair (9, 10) that the disruption, or what landfalls in Tonga and Samoa from neigh- events we are trying to map knew what was “ ” some have called the settlement pause, in boring places immediately to the west, that happening to them, had things thought- colonization in West Polynesia lasted for is, from communities in the cartographic fully planned out and prearranged, all fa- fi nearly two millennia. region of the South Paci c conventionally vored the same game plan from start to Some scholars see great historical sig- labeled Melanesia (“Black Islands”)rather fi fi “ ” nish, and stuck together as a race or ni cance in the fact that East Polynesian than Polynesia ( Many Islands ) (15, 16). people through thick or thin. languages and ways of life are derived Nonetheless, some scholars today still The study of history forces us to take the historically from somewhere in West maintain that the forebears of the Poly- idea and reality of time seriously, but al- Polynesia (11). Except for the small Gal- nesians were a singular people, or peoples, fi though time may allow things to happen, ápagos archipelago, however, there are no who migrated out into the Paci c more or time does not bring them about. It would be substantial landfalls east of East Polynesia less identifiable as such from an ancient naive, therefore, to allow ourselves to be for thousands of kilometers. It is hardly homeland located somewhere in Asia or seduced by our ways of mapping time— surprising, therefore, that when islands in Taiwan (11, 17, 18). According to the in- geological, radiometric, archaeological, or East Polynesia began to be colonized by fluential prehistorian Roger C. Green phylogenetic—into thinking that chronol- people in prehistoric times, those taking only a few years before his death in 2009, ogy and causation are the same. Wilmshurst the risks and reaping the rewards came the discovery and first settlement of the from neighboring islands to the west, that Pacific Islands was achieved over time et al. have done us the good service of put- is, from West Polynesia. Because most through an interlocking series of cultur- ting the baseline of human chronology in Pacific archaeologists, ethnologists, and ally, biologically, and linguistically in- East Polynesia on a much more secure historical linguists today agree that there terrelated human migrations—a historical footing. It is now more obvious than some was indeed a pause in long-distance voy- progression of step-by-step, or “phyloge- have hitherto been willing to entertain that fi aging in West Polynesia during which netic,” pulses or pulse-like cascading the peopling of the Paci c Islands was his- many of the diagnostic traits of Polynesian migrations that eventually culminated in torically unexpected, not historically pre- language and culture evolved locally in situ the colonization of East Polynesia (19). dictable. However, as the old cliché (12), what is new and truly unexpected Perhaps, but there is indeterminacy to goes, their report in PNAS on the high- about what Wilmshurst et al. report is how any series of temporal events however precision radiocarbon dating of the arrival very lengthy this pause was. In light of much, when seen in hindsight, they may of human beings in East Polynesia raises this realization, moreover, it seems even appear to form an orderly and pre- at least as many questions as it resolves. The more likely than previously suspected that meditated sequence of decisive acts or word “migration” would seem to be as good what we today see as Polynesian culture occurrences, namely, in this instance, an a word as any to describe what evidently is an amalgam of traits, some locally ostensibly predictable phylogenetic set happened not so very long ago in the eastern developed in West Polynesia and others (11, 16) of human migrations, colonization part of Polynesia, although the word “colo- derived from elsewhere in the western pulses, or demographic dispersals. The nization” seems similarly adequate, too. It Pacific during this long pause before the results published here lend new force to remains far more debatable, however, settlement of East Polynesia (7, 13). the alternative proposition that the peo- whether this is the right word to use when As Wilmshurst et al. note, it is anyone’s pling of the Pacific was primarily Mar- talking about time and people elsewhere in guess what happened somewhere in West kovian in its expansion and transformation the South Pacific.

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