Identifying Lapita Culture In Papua New Guinea

Ancient Lapita pottery on Booker Island in Papua New Guinea demonstrates the impact of this culture on the peopling of the Pacific

One of my favorite aspects of anthropology is the peopling of the world. And within this subject, I personally consider “out of Africa,” and the colonization of the Pacific the two greatest migration events in humanity. A new paper in Nature Ecology & Evolution¹ outlines a fascinating finding in the latter migration event.

A tiny pottery sherd demonstrat…