The appearance of people associated with the Lapita culture in the South Pacific ~3,000 years ago1 marked the beginning of the last major human dispersal to unpopulated lands. However, the relationship of these pioneers to the long established Papuans of the New Guinea region is unclear. We report genome-wide ancient DNA data from four individuals from Vanuatu (~3100-2700 years before present) and Tonga (~2700-2300 years before present), and co-analyze them with 778 present-day East Asians and Oceanians. Today, indigenous peoples of the South Pacific harbor a mixture of ancestry from Papuans and a population of East Asian origin that does not exist in unmixed form today, but is a match to the ancient individuals. Most analyses have interpreted the minimum of twenty-five percent Papuan ancestry in the region today as evidence that the first humans to reach Remote Oceania, including Polynesia, were derived from population mixtures near New Guinea, prior to the further expansion into Remote Oceania2–5. However, our finding that the ancient individuals had little to no Papuan ancestry implies later human population movements that spread Papuan ancestry through the South Pacific after the islands’ first peopling.

SummaryRecent genomic analyses show that the earliest peoples reaching Remote Oceania – associated with Austronesian-speaking Lapita culture – were almost completely East Asian, without detectable Papuan ancestry. Yet Papuan-related genetic ancestry is found across present-day Pacific populations, indicating that peoples from Near Oceania have played a significant – but largely unknown – ancestral role. Here, new genome-wide data from 19 South Pacific individuals provide direct evidence of a so-far undescribed Papuan expansion into Remote Oceania starting ~2,500 years before present, far earlier than previously estimated and supporting a model from historical linguistics. New genome-wide data from 27 contemporary ni-Vanuatu demonstrate a subsequent and almost complete replacement of Lapita-Austronesian by Near Oceanian ancestry. Despite this massive demographic change, incoming Papuan languages did not replace Austronesian languages. Population replacement with language continuity is extremely rare – if not unprecedented – in human history. Our analyses show that rather than one large-scale event, the process was incremental and complex, with repeated migrations and sex-biased admixture with peoples from the Bismarck Archipelago.

Tonga was unique in the prehistoric Pacific for developing a maritime state that integrated the archipelago under a centralized authority and for undertaking long-distance economic and political exchanges in the second millennium A.D. To establish the extent of Tonga's maritime polity, we geochemically analyzed stone tools excavated from the central places of the ruling paramounts, particularly lithic artifacts associated with stone-faced chiefly tombs. The lithic networks of the Tongan state focused on Samoa and Fiji, with one adze sourced to the Society Islands 2,500 km from Tongatapu. To test the hypothesis that nonlocal lithics were especially valued by Tongan elites and were an important source of political capital, we analyzed prestate lithics from Tongatapu and stone artifacts from Samoa. In the Tongan state, 66% of worked stone tools were long-distance imports, indicating that interarchipelago connections intensified with the development of the Tongan polity after A.D. 1200. In contrast, stone tools found in Samoa were from local sources, including tools associated with a monumental structure contemporary with the Tongan state. Network analysis of lithics entering the Tongan state and of the distribution of Samoan adzes in the Pacific identified a centralized polity and the products of specialized lithic workshops, respectively. These results indicate that a significant consequence of social complexity was the establishment of new types of specialized sites in distant geographic areas. Specialized sites were loci of long-distance interaction and formed important centers for the transmission of information, people, and materials in prehistoric Oceania.Polynesian archaeology | geochemical sourcing | complex societies A rchaeological evidence for prehistoric interaction is critical to understanding the role of intersocietal contact and the power strategies used by elites in the formation of complex societies. In the first half of the second millennium A.D., a powerful and complex society emerged in the Tonga Islands (Fig. 1) that was unique in the Pacific for the way it aggregated an entire archipelago under a single political system. Considered a maritime empire/chiefdom (1-3), Tonga has recently been categorized as a primary/archaic state that, along with the late-prehistoric polities of the Hawaiian Islands, were the most complex societies in prehistoric Oceania (4, ref. 5, p. 146). The ancient Tongan state/ chiefdom was headed by the paramount Tui Tonga (Lord of Tonga) and administered by closely related chiefly families, and it was exceptional in Polynesia for a network of political and economic relationships that extended to other islands and archipelagos (2, 6). The control and redistribution of exotic goods is posited as an important source of capital used to support political centralization (7,8), but it has not been feasible to model prehistoric interaction in the expansive Tongan state using archaeological data because of the paucity of excavations at the central places of the chiefdom and the li...

The first peopling of Sahul (Australia, New Guinea and the Aru Islands joined at lower sea levels) by anatomically modern humans required multiple maritime crossings through Wallacea, with at least one approaching 100 km. Whether these crossings were accidental or intentional is unknown. Using coastal-viewshed analysis and ocean drift modelling combined with population projections, we show that the probability of randomly reaching Sahul by any route is <5% until ≥40 adults are ‘washed off’ an island at least once every 20 years. We then demonstrate that choosing a time of departure and making minimal headway (0.5 knots) toward a destination greatly increases the likelihood of arrival. While drift modelling demonstrates the existence of ‘bottleneck’ crossings on all routes, arrival via New Guinea is more likely than via northwestern Australia. We conclude that anatomically modern humans had the capacity to plan and make open-sea voyages lasting several days by at least 50,000 years ago.

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Fifty-six obsidian artifacts and 141 non-obsidian artifacts were excavated in three field seasons at Teouma, Efate Island, central Vanuatu. Using LA-ICP-MS the majority of the obsidian artifacts were provenienced to the obsidian subsource of Kutau/Bao on West New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago, Papua New Guinea. This study is the first geochemical analysis of a significant assemblage of West New Britain obsidian south of the Solomon Islands. Moreover, this finding represents only the second sizable assemblage of West New Britain obsidian in Remote Oceania beyond the Reefs–Santa Cruz Lapita sites and further establishes Vanuatu as a key area in understanding the initial Lapita settlement of Remote Oceania. Six obsidian artifacts were sourced to the Banks Islands, northern Vanuatu, supporting the hypothesis that sources there were known and utilized from the initial colonization of the Vanuatu Archipelago. A single artifact from the West New Britain subsource of Mopir was found. This is the only Lapita-period Mopir obsidian artifact found so far outside the Bismarck Archipelago. The geochemical analysis was accompanied by a quantitative attribute analysis investigating the reduction technology of the flaked assemblage.

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