Ancient and recent phenotypic variation in Oceania: 3 millennia of migrations in Southern Melanesia documented by linear morphometry

Abstract

Currently, the South-Melanesian region shows a wide cultural and linguistic diversity related to a complex history of interaction and peopling episodes. One episode is associated with human groups related to the Lapita culture, originating from South-East Asia and generally considered as being admixed with Papuan groups. These groups colonized the islands of Vanuatu and New-Caledonia around 3000 BP (Petchey et al. 2014; Sand 2010). This episode is quickly followed by a phase of cultural changes generally interpreted as resulting from local differentiations (Bedford 2009). Another episode, that occurred around 1000 BP, corresponds to the dispersal of the Polynesian groups, amongst which some reached a number of South-Melanesian islands (Kirch and Swift 2017). We examine this pattern of island settlement by the mean of a comparative morphometric study of human mandibles from Vanuatu archaeological contexts representing these three time periods. To this end, we compare ancient phenotypes to the modern variability to investigate the transformation of the Lapita biological entity in Remote Oceania through a diachronic perspective