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The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian people and their distinct material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] The Lapita people are believed to have originated from the northern Philippines , either directly, via the Mariana Islands , or both. [ 3 ]
Teouma is a major archaeological site 800 m (2,625 ft) from Teouma Bay on the island of Éfaté in Vanuatu.The site contains the oldest known cemetery within the Pacific Islands, and has been important in the gathering of information relating to the Lapita people of the ninth and tenth centuries BC.
Important discoveries include the earliest Lapita culture sites of Fiji, as well as the oldest human skeleton found in Fiji (dating about 700 BC). The skeleton is named Mana, which belonged to a woman who was approximately 40–60 year old and 161–164 cm tall. The skeleton was excavated on the Lapita Culture Complex site called Naitabale.
This culture, known as Lapita, stands out in the Melanesian archeological record, with its large permanent villages on beach terraces along the coasts. Particularly characteristic of the Lapita culture is the making of pottery, including a great many vessels of varied shapes, some distinguished by fine patterns and motifs pressed into the clay.
The early history of Tonga covers the islands' settlement and the early Lapita culture through to the rise of the Tuʻi Tonga Empire. What is known about Tonga before European contact comes from myths, stories, songs, poems, (as there was no writing system) as well as from archaeological excavations.
The eastern part of Melanesia that includes Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Fiji, was first inhabited by Austronesian peoples, who created the Lapita culture, and later followed by Melanesian groups. They appear to have occupied these islands as far east as the main islands in the Solomon Islands , including Makira and possibly the smaller islands ...
An Austronesian-speaking group linked to what archaeologists call the Lapita culture covered from Island Melanesia to Samoa, and then on to inhabit Tonga sometime between 1500 and 1000 BC. [18] Scholars still debate exactly when Tonga was first settled, but thorium dating confirms that settlers had arrived in the earliest known inhabited town ...
Obsidian transported from New Guinea was found with the earliest New Caledonian Lapita pottery. In addition, some researchers have claimed there is evidence of New Caledonian human habitation dating from 3000 BC (predating Lapita culture by 1500 years), while others claim to have found pre-Lapita pottery. [13]