Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T01:25:52.620Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Population expansion in the western Pacific (Austronesia): a wave of advance model

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Joaquim Fort
Joaquim Fort*
Affiliation:
Departament de Física, Universitat de Girona, Campus de Montilivi, 17071 Girona, Catalonia, Spain
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The author reconsiders the ‘wave of advance model’ used to describe (and partly explain) the rate at which people adopted farming. It is usually applied to large open areas, where one population group can easily see or meet another – but the populations considered here live on islands. Joaquim Fort finds that the 5000 km extent of the South Pacific was settled in the Neolithic period at a rate of at least 8 km per year.

Keywords

NeolithicPacific Oceandemicpopulation
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 77 , Issue 297 , September 2003 , pp. 520 - 530
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Ammerman, A. 2001. Agriculture: Spread of agriculture, in Oxford Encyclopaedia of Evolution (in press).Google Scholar
Ammerman, A. & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L.. 1984. The Neolithic transition and the genetics of populations in Europe. Princeton: Princeton University Press. For computer simulations and the role of the interaction between farmers and hunter-gatherers, see Rendine, Piazza & Cavalli-Sforza (1986).Google Scholar
Anderson, A. 1991. The chronology of colonization in New Zealand. Antiquity 65: 767–95.Google Scholar
Anderson, A. & Clark, G.. 1999. The age of Lapita settlement in Fiji. Archaeol. Oceania 34: 31–39.Google Scholar
Bar-Yoseph, O. 2001. Natufian through Early Neolithic: Economic and Demographic Trends in Southwestern Asia, in Examining the Farming/ Language Dispersal Hypothesis. MacDonald Institute for Archeological Research, University of Cambridge, 24–27 Aug. 2001.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 1997. Prehistory of the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.Google Scholar
Bellwood, P. 2000. Polynesian prehistory and the rest of mankind. Proc. Pacific 2000 Conference (Easter Island Foundation, Hawaii, 2002).Google Scholar
Bentley, R.A., Chikhi, L. & Price, T.D.. 2003. The Neolithic Transition in Europe: the radiocarbon record revisted. Antiquity 77: 63–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blrdsell, J.P. 1957. Some population problems involving Pleistocene Man. Cold Spring Harbor Symposium in Quantitative Biology 22: 47–69.Google Scholar
Burley, D.V., Nelson, D.E., & Shulter, R. Jr. 1999. Archaeol. Oceania 34: 59–70.Google Scholar
Cann, R.L. 2000. Talking trees tell tales. Nature 405:1008–09.Google Scholar
Diamond, N. 2000. Reply to Oppenheimer and Richards, ‘Slow boat to Polynesia?’ Nature 410:167.Google Scholar
Finney, B.R. 1977. Voyaging canoes and the settlement of Polynesia. Science 196: 1277–85.Google Scholar
Fisher, R.A. 1937. The wave of advance of advantageous genes. Annals of Eugenics (London) 7: 355–69.Google Scholar
Fort, J. & Méndez, V. 1999a. Time-delayed theory of the Neolithic transition in Europe, Physical Review Letters 82: 867–71 (1999). For computer simulations and the role of the interaction between farmers and hunter-gatherers, see Méndez, Fort and Farjas (1999), Sec. VGoogle Scholar
Fort, J. & Méndez, V. 1999b. Reaction-diffusion waves of advance in the transition to agricultural economics. Physical Review E 60: 5894–5901.Google Scholar
Fort, J. & Méndez, V. 2002. Time-delayed spread of viruses in a growing plaque. Physical Review Letters 89, 178–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibbons, A. 2001. The peopling of the Pacific. Science 291: 1735–37.Google Scholar
Gkiasta, M., Russell, T., Shennan, S. & Steele, J.. ‘Neolithic transition in Europe: the radiocarbon record revisited’ Antiquity 77: 45–62.Google Scholar
Gray, R.D. & Jordan, F.M.. 2000. Language trees support the express-train sequence of Austronesian expansion. Nature 405: 1052–55.Google Scholar
Green, R.C. 2000. Religious structures of Southeastern Polynesia. In Essays in honour of Arne Skjolsvld 75 years. Wallin, P. & Martinsson-Wallin, H., eds. Oslo: Kon-Tili Museum, pp. 83–100.Google Scholar
Irwin, G. 1992. The prehistoric exploration and colonization of the Pacific. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaeppler, A.L. 1978. Exchange patterns in goods and spouses: Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Mankind 11: 246–52.Google Scholar
Kirch, P. 1986. Rethinking Polynesian prehistory. J. Polynesian Soc. 95: 9–40.Google Scholar
Kirch, P.V. 2000, On the road of the winds. An archaeological history of the Pacific Islands before European contact. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, specially Chap. XI, Sec. IV.Google Scholar
Matisoo-Smith, E., Roberts, R.M., Irwin, G.J., Allen, J.S., Penny, S. & Lambert, D.M.. 1998. Patterns of prehistoric human mobility in Polynesia indicated by the mtDNA from the Pacific rat. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 95: 15145–50.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mead, M. 1930. Social organization of Manua. Bishop Museum Bull. 76. Honolulu: Bishop Museum.Google Scholar
Méndez, V., Fort, J. & Farjas, J.. 1999. Speed of wavefront solutions to hyperbolic reaction-diffusion equations. Physical Review E 60: 5231–43.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, S.J. & Richards, M.. 2000. Slow boat to Melanesia? Nature 410: 166–167.Google Scholar
Parkinson, R. 1986. Ethnography of Ontong Java and Tasman Island with remarks. Pacific studies 9: No. 3, 1–31.Google Scholar
Rendine, S., Piazza, A. & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. 1986. Simulation and separation by principal components of multiple demic expansions in Europe. American Naturalist 128: 681–705.Google Scholar
Roscoe, P.B. 1987. Of canoes and castaways: reassessing the population of Tongavera (Penrhyn Island) at contact. Pacific Studies Vol. 11, No. 1, 43–61, specially note 5 and the population model in p. 50.Google Scholar
Sokal, R.R. & Rohlf, F.J.. 1981. Biometry, 2nd ed. San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Sand, C. 1997, The chronology of Lapita ware in New Caledonia. Antiquity 71: 539–47.Google Scholar
Shigesada, N. & Kawasaki, K.. 1997. Biological invasions: theory and practice. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Spriggs, M. & Anderson, A.. 1993. Late colonization of East Polynesia. Antiquity 67: 200–217.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turchin, P. 1998. Quantitative analysis of movement. Measuring and modelling population redistribution in animals and plants. Sunderland: Sinauer Associates, Inc. Google Scholar
Van Andel, T.H. & Runnels, C.N.. 1995. The earliest farmers in Europe, Antiquity 69: 481–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weisler, M.I. & Kirch, P.V.. 1996. Interisland and interarchipelago transfer of stone tools in prehistoric Polynesia. Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA 93:1381–1385.Google Scholar
Williamson, M. 1996. Biological invasions. London: Chapman & Hall.Google Scholar