Understanding the human settlement of the Pacific – Are we there yet?

Abstract

As a result of developments in genomic technology over the last 15 years, we have seen a major shift in our understanding of the settlement of the Pacific – from a period of nearly 40 years of a near consensus view of human settlement history to a very different narrative of events and processes. Here we provide a brief overview of what has become a generally well accepted story of human settlement before reviewing some of the latest genomic research contributions to reconstructing Pacific settlement. This will be followed by a discussion of some of the limitations of the current data and interpretations along with some suggestions regarding how we might proceed in the future. This paper does not aim to “solve” the “problem” of understanding the settlement history of this vast region, but to generate some new hypotheses that now can be addressed with a full, truly interdisciplinary approach, that engages Pacific voices and their concerns in the instigation and interpretation of research involving their lands, peoples and culutes.