Sailors leave ancient fingerprints across Polynesia

A long-standing debate on the colonisation process of Oceania has been put to rest with new research finding Polynesia was deliberately settled in one of the greatest maritime migrations in human history. The University of Queensland research used chemical fingerprinting on stone tools to show sailors travelled throughout the Polynesian islands for several centuries after colonisation. UQ School of Social Science researcher Professor Marshall Weisler said tools were taken to the Cook Islands from across the eastern Pacific from as early as AD1300. "Early Polynesians were mariners at the top of their game, bringing all the necessary items to settle and found a new colony," he said. "By geochemically fingerprinting exotic stone artefacts from a well-dated archaeological site in the Cook Islands, we have demonstrated that the geographical voyaging network extended beyond the Cook Islands to include the Austral, Samoa, and Marquesas archipelagos — up to 2400 km in distance." The research found that voyaging between the Polynesian islands lasted from about AD1300 to the 1600s, suggesting that long-distance interaction continued to influence the development of social structures in East Polynesia well after initial colonisation. Field work for the study was directed by Professor Patrick Kirch (University of California, Berkeley), and conducted on Mangaia Island in the Southern Cook Islands. It was here that the tools - stone adzes -were found at the Tangatatau Rockshelter.