The Polynesian origins in South Asia and Southeast Asia reviewed 2014

A recent academic review in 2014 of "Where do Polynesians come from", as to the general Southeast Asian region, debates a late theory of "Out of Taiwan", never official or agreed upon. Many academics make it a note that the Lapita complex is a "bad name and bad theory", being incredibly misleading and the theory filled with misinformation. The Lapita have never been an actual people or culture in the pacific, the name was chosen, and by who and why is a question asked many a time.

Pacific academic said "In the last 20 years, at least no longer do western academics include religious links to lost Jewish tribes, pyramid building aliens from outer space, or Indians from South America, as those theories had attracted considerable embarrassment."

Reviewing the Lapita Pottery Theory
The Lapita pottery is debated to have had its original uses, from a Southeast Asian trade network, linked to the famous intercontinental Spice Trade. The Spice Trade is dated to to have spun its networks at 6,500 years ago, running into the west, through Indian Ocean and Arabian seas, and on into Southeast and Northern Africa. This history of the Spice Trade and it's brief appearance in the outer-Pacific, mistaken for a "Lapita culture", exhibits no relationship to the actual origins of Polynesian origins, being that the genetic results are much older than the pottery.

A proposal claims the pottery supported brief trades that interacted with the Spice Trade routes, which networked through the Maluku island groups, Melanesia, and parts of Polynesia, which then expanded and then disappeared over time with market fluctuations. It's also favored the export trade from the outer pacific, and not an import trade, ended in the pacific because of weather and War.

Greatest Polynesian Expansions 10,000 years ago
The Southeastern region of Sri Lanka, Nepal to Thailand, and the areas of Singapore, and Suluwesi Indonesia have been a great focus on being the areas of first Polynesian expansions. The central region of Indonesia in Southeast Asia or "Sundaland" has been the latest focus of Polynesian origin for the last 60 years.

At the end of the last ice-age 12,000-9,000 years ago, ocean levels significantly elevated, warming ice-caps. The safest dates to give the largest Polynesian expansion into Northern East Asia and the outer Pacific islands is 8-10,000 years during the very late Holocene-era, fueled again by a dramtic climate change. However, the last expansion does not prove to be the "first" Pacific wave in Asia, and climate change has seemed to have only encouraged an already migratory and colonizing path from the Southeast Pacific. Melanesia and Papua have also been genetically proven to have connected and separated within the last 10,000 years.

Genetics markers of the first Polynesian Origins
Archaeological finds and genetic markers in Southeast Asia, date first settlements and early expansions, at least 44-50kya, flowing across major landscapes. Anthropologists use the genetic track of "The Polynesian Motif B4a1a1", along with several other Haplogroup R11 and B to trace exploratory routes into Central Asia. The older Polynesian lineages in ancient mainland East Asia, have since fused over the centuries with other older Malayo-Polynesian expansions and Southeast Asian descendants, creating a modern East Asia. 

Posted in: The History Poker Blog