History, Phylogeny, and Evolution in Polynesia

Speciation and Bursts of Evolution

“…Kirch and Green (1987) suggested that the movement of Polynesians inhabiting Pacific islands might have caused an increased rate of language evolution owing to the many and successive founder events to which such island hopping would have led. These founder events are the linguistic equivalent of genetic founder events.…”

Research on the early prehistory of Fiji

“…Looking at Lapita sites in general, Lepofsky (1988) had found that all were coastal and had ready access to the open sea, but there was no particularly evident proximity to reefal and lagoonal resources, arable land was generally close by, and a locational emphasis on small islands was less apparent than was generally believed. Other syntheses of Lapita site characteristics (Butler 1988;Nagaoka 1988) showed that faunal remains were relatively sparse overall and lent no strong support to either of the competing hypotheses: that Lapita expansion was fuelled largely by littoral and marine foraging -the so-called 'strandlooper hypothesis' (Groube 1971); or that it was mainly an agricultural expansion (Green 1979;Kirch and Green 1987), as documented by remains of introduced animals. As Kirch pointed out (1988:160), the evidence for horticulture, which was the core strategy at issue, remained indirect.…”

The Irish S� Tradition: Connections Between the Disciplines, and What?s in a Word?

“…One colorful study in contrasts is the reconstruction of the Polynesian group and its expansion into the "Polynesian triangle." Here meager historical evidence is combined with the more plentiful linguistic, biological, folkloric, and archaeological data to present a compelling reconstructed story of the sea-faring Polynesians (see Cachola-Abad, 1993;Kirch and Green, 1987;Kirch and Sahlins, 1992). For prehistorians who rely more exclusively on archaeological evidence, the same story is told very differently by Terell (1990).…”