Human Settlement

Abstract

This chapter presents several samples, including oral histories in poetry, archaeology in theprose of the natural sciences, linguistics in the form of genealogies, and the more conventional language of academic history. The Kumulipo chant and the 'Story of Latmikaik' are not narrowly historical, but creation stories from Polynesian Hawai'i and Micronesian Palau. Meanwhile Archaeology was developing formidable skills in analysing physical remains of past societies, while linguists organised languages into families with genealogies describing their evolution from common ancestor languages. One of the most useful historical disciplines which developed during the past hundred years is Linguistics. The complementary distribution of Austronesian languages and the Island South-East Asian Neolithic and Lapita cultural complexes suggests dates for the spread of both. Castaways from South-East Asia, from South America, and from Portuguese and Spanish ships of the sixteenth century appear to have been significant actors in the last 2000 years of Pacific Island prehistory.

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