Polynesians

Polynesian migration theories challenged by new research

The University of Auckland study analysed 193 Neolithic period (10,000 to 4,500 BCE) carbon-dates on ceramics from 20 archaeological sites in island South East Asia and concluded that there was an extraordinary mixing of populations as people moved further south into the Pacific, rather than via two distinct routes that unfolded step by step.

Language, kumara and chickens - proof of Polynesian voyaging

Or perhaps they continued East and arrived in the Americas about 700 years ago; for many researchers this theory is no longer speculation but a bona fide theory backed by mounting evidence including kumara, language similarities and Polynesian chickens.

Science communications student Ellen Rykers ponders the journey of Polynesians around the Pacific, wondering where they might have got to.

     

DNA from ancient skeletons reveals the Polynesians may have come from Taiwan 5,000 years ago

Now a genetic study has raised intriguing new insights into who the pioneering sea-going people who first arrived on the remote South Pacific Islands were.

The findings suggest that the first inhabitants on the Polynesian islands did not come from New Guinea as originally thought.

Instead they appear to have come from another mysterious Neolithic East Asian population that is thought to have originated in Taiwan.