Tracking the Lapita, ‘Pioneers of the Pacific’

Photo of Vanuatu by PhillipC, via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Fascinating story in National Geographic about how the Lapita managed to explore and colonize the Pacific Ocean beginning 3,000 years ago. Roff Smith writes:

It was their descendants, centuries later, who became the great Polynesian navigators we all tend to think of: the Tahitians and Hawaiians, the New Zealand Maori, and the curious people who erected those statues on Easter Island. But it was the Lapita who laid the foundation—who bequeathed to the islands the language, customs, and cultures that their more famous descendants carried around the Pacific.

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