Imposing a way of life can have terrible consequences. This story has a universal feel to it, about the dangers of trying to dam natural drives:
I well remember an aboriginal couple who were married "Christian way in church". The woman was not aware that the union was a fixed one - not as in the tribe, where the people can become divorced by mutual consent.
The marriage irked her so much that she decided to break it up and take to herself another man of the tribe. Her method was simple and ingenious.
She became the friend of another native man I knew and, unknown to him, used him as a means of arousing her husband to such a jealous madness that he crept upon the man, who he thought was his wife's lover, and killed him with a spear.
I found it all out too late, and even then I could not stop the self-satisfied smile on the real killer's face, as her husband went to jail whilst she returned to her true lover. From "Life among the aborigines" by W E Harney, Robert Hale, 1957 (pp. 31-32)
Demonstrating the Aussie wave, aka Australian salute: http://i.imgbox.com/achP9bim.gif
Reporting on the experimental use of a virus to control burgeoning numbers of European carp Down Under, the Wall Street Journal lists "five animals that have gone wild in Australia". Four species are also European imports, but the fifth - flies, of the "bush" type that pesters everyone outdoors - certainly isn't:
"... it's likely the fly got to Australia in an Aboriginal boat, the same way the dingo got here. In that case, the bush fly might have arrived in Australia as long as 45,000 years ago," says Jim Heath in his Seuss-like-titled 1989 book "The Fly In Your Eye"* Heath explains that the bush fly needs protein to develop its eggs and is quite happy to find it in human tear ducts, noses, saliva and sweat, not to mention blood and raw meat; hence the plague of them at barbecues. As beef farming grew so did the fly population, feeding and breeding on the droppings of Australia's 28 million cattle. At up to 12 cowpats daily per animal, times up to 2,000 larvae per pat, the herds are potentially fostering quadrillions of flies. Not just bush flies. Initial efforts to control flies focused on agricultural pests such as the blood-sucking buffalo fly and involved chemicals, to which the insects are increasingly becoming immune. So attention turned to biological controls, and this is where the dung-beetle comes in. Dr. George Bornemissza of the Australian CSIRO looked at native beetles and determined that they couldn't cope, so in April 1967 he began a project to import other species:
The first foreign beetles were from Hawaii, released in Queensland on 30 January 1968. The dung-beetles disrupt fly-larval development by shredding and burying manure - which also improves soil quality and helps reduce contamination of run-off water, say the Kiwis, who are using the same strategy. Because of Australia's diverse climate it was originally estimated that 160 different species would be required; in practice, "a total of 53 species were introduced and of these 23 have established," says CSIRO.
Unfortunately these species tend to cease their activity in early spring before the new season's flies begin to arrive, so two more kinds that are active at that time were introduced in 2012 from France and Spain to southern Australia by Dr Bernard Doube. The entomologist has been calling for a $50 million program to introduce 25 additional species, money which he says will multiply into several billions-worth of extra pastural productivity. The real salute, then is reserved for the dung-beetle:
The next time you’re driving down a country road in outback Australia, consider there’s a good chance that very route was originally mapped out by Aboriginal people perhaps thousands of years before Europeans came to Australia.
And like today, they turned to the skies to aid their navigation. Except instead of using a GPS network, they used the stars above to help guide their travels.
Aboriginal people have rich astronomical traditions, but we know relatively little about their navigational abilities.
We do know that there was a very well established and extensive network of trade routes in operation before 1788. These were used by Aboriginal people for trading in goods and stories, and the trade routes covered vast distances across the Australian continent.
Star maps
I was researching the astronomical knowledge of the Euahlayi and Kamilaroi Aboriginal peoples of northwest New South Wales in 2013 when I became aware of “star maps” as a means of teaching navigation outside of one’s own local country.
My teacher of this knowledge was Ghillar Michael Anderson, a Euahlayi Culture Man from Goodooga, near the Queensland border. This is where the western plains and the star-filled night sky meet in a seamless and profound display.
Ghillar Michael Anderson and a possible waypoint.Author provided
One night, sitting under those stars in Goodooga, Michael pointed out a pattern of stars to the southeast, and said that they were used to teach Euahlayi travellers how to navigate outside their own country during the summer travel season.
As an astronomer, I immediately realised that those stars were not in the direction of travel that Michael was describing. And anyway, they wouldn’t be visible in the summer, let alone during the day when people would have been travelling.
Michael said that they weren’t used as a map as such, but were used as a memory aid. And in the Aboriginal manner of teaching, he asked me to research this and come back to see if “I had gotten it”.
I did some research, and looked at a route from Goodooga to the Bunya Mountains northwest of Brisbane, where an Aboriginal Bunya nut festival was held every three years until disrupted by European invasion.
It turned out the pattern of stars showed the “waypoints” on the route. These waypoints were usually waterholes or turning places on the landscape. These waypoints were used in a very similar way to navigating with a GPS, where waypoints are also used as stopping or turning points.
Star map route to the Bunya Mountains.Starry Night Education
Stars to songlines
Further discussion revealed the reasons and methods of this technique. In the winter camp, when the summer travel was being planned in August or September, a person who had travelled the intended route was tasked with teaching others, who had not made this journey, how to navigate to the intended destination.
The pattern of stars (the “star map”) was used as a memory aid in teaching the route and the waypoints to the destination. After more research I asked Michael if the method of teaching and memorising was by song, as I was aware that songs are known to be an effective way of memorising a sequence in the oral transmission of knowledge.
Michael said, “you got it!”, and I then understood that the very process of creating, then teaching, such a route resulted in what is known as a songline. A songline is a story that travels over the landscape, which is then imprinted with the song (Aboriginal people will say that the landscape imprints the song).
I then learned that there were many routes/songlines from Goodooga to destinations as far as 700km away, which might end up in a ceremonial place, or possibly a trade “fair”.
One such route to Quilpie, in Queensland, led to a ceremonial place where Arrernte people from north of Alice Springs met the Euahlayi for joint ceremonies.
Their route of travel was more than 1,500km, crossing the Simpson Desert in summer, and I was told that they would have their own star map/songline for learning that route. The implication of this is that the use of star maps for teaching travel may have been common across Australia.
Star map route to the Carnarvon Gorge.Starry Night Education
Parallels
Another surprising result of this knowledge came about when I was looking at the star map routes from Goodooga to the Bunya Mountains and Carnarvon Gorge in Queensland. When the star map routes were overlaid over the modern road map, there was a significant overlap with major roads in use today.
After some reflection, the reason for this became clear. The first explorers in this region, such as Thomas Mitchell, who explored here in 1845-1846, used Aboriginal people as guides and interpreters, who were likely given directions by local Aborigines.
Carnarvon Gorge and Bunya Mts star maps overlaid on road map.Google Earth
These directions would no doubt reflect the easiest routes to traverse, and these were probably routes already established as songlines. Drovers and settlers coming into the region would have used the same routes, and eventually these became tracks and finally highways.
In a sense, the Aboriginal people of Australia had a big part in the layout of the modern Australian road network. And in some cases, such as the Kamilaroi Highway running from the Hunter Valley to Bourke in NSW, this has been recognised in the name.
Robert will be on hand for an Author Q&A between 3 and 4pm AEST on Thursday, April 7, 2016. Post your questions in the comments section OF THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE - link given below. Robert S. Fuller, PhD Student Indigenous Cultural Astronomy, UNSW Australia
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
"Australia rock art - Mimis and Kangaroo, rock art, Oenpelli, Arnhem Land, Australia. Older painting before 7,000 BCE, Kangaroo probably post-contact. (Sayre, 2010, p. 975)" - https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/521502831831829461/
Bill Harney, looking at cave art in Arnhem Land in the 1940s:
Kangaroos, bandicoots, fish, reptiles - all are drawn nice and fat because he desires them that way.
Many of the paintings have been drawn as though seen through an X-ray, and beholding them we are amazed at the line details of the creature's internal organs. I questioned one of the artists who was working on a bark painting, and he described things to me.
"This," he explained, as he pointed out an object amidst the intestines, "is the fat." Then, with emphasis, "Proper fat this one." "That there," again on the anatomy, "is the heart. This red thing is the liver and the fine white lines are the backbone."
Each part was pointed out and it was correctly in place. Nothing strange about this, because these people had been cutting up and eating these things for years. They were professional anatomists when the drawings of the ancient white doctors would have been laughed at by an Oenpelli aborigine.
It was on those hills around Oenpelli that I saw the matchstick art that is so full of animation. My guide told me that it was the work of "Me-mies", the mythical bush elves who are "too clever" to be seen, and who draw these things, in the dark, from a paint made up of human blood and charcoal. Those "Me-mies" were indeed "too clever" - a few strokes on the rocky face and the picture was a group of natives fleeing from another.
I asked the native what he thought about them. He only shrugged his shoulders in reply, but shortly afterwards when we came upon a meaningless thing of coloured ochres and lines his voice vibrated with pride as he explained it in detail. The lines were the falling rain; the red streaks were the lightning thrown by a sky hero; the dots were the rain drops splashing on the ground below, which was another splash of ochre; the wriggly lines were the rivers in flood.
"Good picture?" I questioned him, as he stood expectantly by awaiting my decision. "Proper good," came his reply. "Plenty rain... full up tucker."
- "Life Among The Aborigines" by W. E. Harney, Robert Hale Limited (1957) - pp. 117-118
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Writing in 2013 about the estimated 100,000 sites of aboriginal Australian art, Susan Gough Henly says:
"In spite of extensive studies, it is still
extremely difficult to pinpoint the age of rock art
because most organic pigments cannot be carbon
dated. A rare charcoal drawing on the Central
Arnhem Land Plateau has been radiocarbon-dated
to 28,000 years ago, making it the oldest
painting in Australia and among the oldest in
the world with reliable date evidence – but the
engravings are probably much older."
What is thought to be the oldest cave painting in the world - from Sulawesi in Indonesia - has been dated to at least 39,000 years ago. It is a hand stencil (something also found at Oenpelli):
As the United Nations' OCHA explains, this is related to an El Niño event in the eastern Pacific - warming of surface ocean waters leading to changes in weather patterns across the world. While some areas become drier, others will experience higher rainfall leading to flooding and higher sea levels, the latter especially trying for low-lying islands.
But is it proof of "global warming"?
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has historic data of ocean temperature variations in the El Niño-prone region going back to 1950 (1). The 3-month period from last December to February 2016 saw the highest positive variation from mean, ever (2.2 degrees C).
However, sceptics could say (a) there are always difficulties with methodology in measurements like these and (b) 65 years is not long in geological terms.
It also depends on how you sample and present the information. Typically, the highest average surface ocean temperatures are found in the September-November period:
The pattern is similar to that in the first graph, but what happens if we start looking at years, rather than rolling quarter-years?
This year still looks exceptionally warm. Yet take 5-year averages and the picture changes significantly:
On that basis the current El Niño is merely returning us to the average point. And look at the pattern for rolling 10-year averages:
Taken as a whole, the last decade has actually been cooler! In fact, since the decade 1992-2001 the rolling 10-yearly averages have all been on or below the mean. If reversion to the mean is to be expected, we should be anticipating some more years of above-average temperatures as a correction.
This doesn't at all help the nations now in crisis; but help is coming, and as ever it has political implications. In a Radio New Zealand interview on Friday, Mark Adams of the International Organization for Migration stressed the logistical difficulties of assistance from the Philippines and the USA's west coast; yet a couple of weeks ago the Federated States of Micronesia issued a press release reporting a visit by the Chinese Ambassador, who announced a "10 million RMB worth of equipment specifically to address and mitigate the effects of the drought."
It has been said that the Chinese ideogram for "crisis" is a combination of elements representing "danger" and "opportunity". Even if its meaning is more correctly explained as "critical point," the notion may have relevance for Western geopolitical analysts looking at the Pacific region.
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"Florence Lengkon led a march through town and up to Parliament in which nearly a thousand people demonstrated their desire to see an end to violence against women," reported the Vanuatu Daily Post yesterday.
The trigger for this was an abduction and beating Lengkon received at the hands of bus and taxi drivers nearly a fortnight ago, following critical remarks she had posted on a community page on Facebook. She had called them arrogant and unprofessional for the way they had squabbled among themselves when trying to get business from visiting tourists (and for stoning a tour bus). Lengkon herself runs a helicopter business in Port Vila.
There are many facets to this story: risks in social media discussions, attitudes to women, the poverty that tempts men to misbehave when the chance to make some money presents itself, the great disparity between them and rich Westerners passing by in their floating castle, tourism itself in the form of a brief condescending gawp at other cultures, the question of how small Pacific nations should develop and sustain themselves, what will happen to them if there is a long global recession, etc.
For those who aren't involved, one aspect of the story that pops out is the fact that Lengkon's comments were written in Bislama, one of the three official languages of the Republic.
Bislama is a kind of pidgin English widely used there because the country has over 100 different languages and dialects: "Vanuatu is considered to be the country with the highest density of languages per capita in the world, with an average of about 2,000 speakers for each indigenous language; only Papua New Guinea comes close," says Wikipedia.
There is probably a connection to PNG: Vanuatu may have been colonised by Autronesian speakers as early as 4,000 - 6,000 years ago in the eastward expansion from what is now Papua, which itself saw the arrival of humans some 60,000 years ago, together with other movement into Australia.
Many languages of small communities are considered "endangered" - there was a UNESCO conference about this in 2008. But perhaps preserving them is a futile, Canute-like attempt.
Not to worry; in the far future, when our current energy-rich civilisations are forgotten, there will be isolation and cultural-linguistic variation again, just as island wildlife mutates to take advantage of local niche opportunities.
Humour sells. Vanuatu and a church ministry from near Melbourne, Australia have launched a project with multiple purposes: sanitation, fresh water collection, tourism and economic development.
So, a loo with its own website. Any good toilet-themed jokes or headlines?
"Table manners may seem crude but it is not very long ago that the people of Britain were eating with their hands."
This film, "Primitive Peoples Part 1" by G. B. [Gaumont British] Instructional Ltd is careful not to condescend (1). Actor Peter Finch, already famous in Australia for his radio work, assisted with shooting as well as narrating (2).
The people shown are said to be of the "Miwai", though their territory as described is that of the Yolngu and one or two of the sub-groups named are recognisably in the Yolngu list in Wikipedia (3). The press article from the Melbourne Argus (23 August 1947) names the tribe as "Wongurris" and says they were paid with around a ton of food supplies (4).
The film crew's guide and liaison officer was Edward "Ted" Evans of the Native Affairs Branch in Darwin - he terms the tribe Wangurri in his 1990 memoir of Arnhem Land. Evans had become familiar with the area and its people at the end of World war 2, when the Royal Australian Air Force Base on Gove Peninsula was decommissioned and for some reason he and writer Bill Harney were left there for five months after they had finished stocktaking. "To me the whole 1946 Gove Peninsula experience was a revelation of the richness of the Aboriginal world, of the
fascinating variety of wildlife on our doorstep and particularly of the depth of understanding and mutual respect that existed between Bill Harney and the Aboriginal people." (5)
So far I have not found Parts 2 and 3 of the film - according to Evans, the only copy in Australia was held by the Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies.
Evans concludes, "In 1972, I acquired for the first time copies of the Gaumont British film made in 1947.1 took it out to Yirrkala, but as twenty-five years had elapsed and therefore some of those appearing had since died, I showed it first only to the elders to get their reaction before running it before
the general community. Their reaction was one of wistful sorrow, followed by a request that I not show it publicly - not because of any taboo content of which there is none. but because'of
the sadness they felt personally on observing the living activities of persons now dead. Of
course, I complied with their request.
"I retired in 1976 almost thirty years after my first arrival at Melville Bay with Bill Harney. In
that time I developed a strong feeling for Arnhem Land and a high regard for its people. particularly
those of Yirrkala. This esteem still continues and I value the contacts I am able to
make occasionally thereby maintaining a nostalgic link with a crowded, but fading past. I look
back on my involvement with some pride and I trust that my humble efforts may have helped
the people to face and cope with the dramatic, complex and fast-moving changes that were
brought upon them over that span of years. Rarely in the history of mankind has a people,
within the span of one generation, been required to make adjustments to their lifestyle which
have impacted upon almost every vital element of their traditional world."
_____________________________
As the poster above for today's meeting shows, the debate over Hawaiian sovereignty is hot. Last month, a draft constitution for Native Hawaiians was agreed - behind locked and guarded gates - by an organisation called Nai Upuni. Although they are supported financially by the State’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, their claim to be representative of indigenous groups is vigorously opposed by another association called ʻAha Aloha ʻĀina(1). In response to a lawsuit and U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the proposed ratification vote has now been cancelled(2).
There are wrongs to be righted. The campaigning site Cultural Survival outlines some of the difficulties of the marginalised and exploited "first nation" Hawaiians(3). Many have had to move to mainland USA for a better life - there are some 90,000 in Las Vegas aka "the ninth island"(4). In their own ancestral lands, Native Hawaiians are now a minority - exactly how small, depends on how you define them; maybe 10% - 20% of residents. There is more than one reason for this: numbers of Native Hawaiians crashed after European contact in the late eighteenth century, as imported diseases swept through the population, but also there has been a large influx of Asians and Americans in modern times, especially since the illegal(5) annexation of the country by the US following a coup by sugar businessmen(6, 7, 8).
Even compensatory help for Native Hawaiians is limited, as Amy Sun explains: "In 1921, Congress passed the 'Hawaiian Homes Commission Act,' which [set aside merely] 3% of the total land for Native Hawaiians. [...] 'Native Hawaiian' is defined as a person who is at least 50% Native Hawaiian. So if you [have less than this proportion], you lose your right to homestead." Sun also notes that Native Hawaiians are over-represented among the State's homeless(9). The need for a collective voice is obvious.
But there could be as much danger as opportunity in seeking a separate kind of citizenship - the example of Native Americans is not heartening. Besides, as President of the Grassroots Institute Keli’i Akina commented, "This [constitutional exercise] represents a significant waste of funds that could have been better used on the projects that Hawaiians truly care about–like health care, job training, housing, and education."(10) In addition, sovereignty activists must surely be aware of the possibility of legal (or tactical) traps in constitutional processes - think of the 1959 Hawaii plebiscite, in which residents voted on whether to remain a territory or become a US State (11). Crucially, independence for Hawaiians was not on offer in 1959, and to have voted either of the two given choices could be taken as implicit abandonment of claims to national freedom. It's been argued that this subtle stratagem cuts across a UN Resolution made some years before, so perhaps international legal challenge is still possible(12).
Having said that, is it geopolitically realistic to expect the USA to relinquish its hold on the islands, especially at a time when China is forging closer links with one Pacific nation after another?
Irrespective of the machinations of empires, the status quo is not an option in the long term, for a far greater factor for change is involved: sustainability. This is a global issue, which impacts heavily on Hawaii. The State has a population of around 1.4 million; even without 50,000 military personnel and an average 200,000 tourists at any one time, there are well over a million permanent residents. Estimates of numbers in 1778 vary widely - between 200,000 and anything up to a million(13) - but whatever the actual figure, the lifestyle then was dramatically less resource-intensive per capita. How much longer can a large, high-burn civilisation last in Hawaii?
Take energy: despite having the third-lowest per capita energy use in the USA in 2013, Hawaii imported 91% of its needs in that year(14). The goal is to move to 100% renewable energy by 2045, but even now this is beginning to look like wishful thinking(15). Besides, the devices involved in renewable energy production imply a vast network of enterprises, just as with Adam Smith's 1776 example of pin manufacture(16) - except that those modern enterprises also mostly consume non-animal/non-human energy. The foundation of the world's technological network is vulnerable.
Then there's food: again, 90% is imported and modern agriculture and food management is also highly energy-intensive(17).
How long have we got, to make changes for survival? "If the world continues to consume fossil fuels at 2006 rates, the reserves of oil, coal and gas will last a further 40, 200 and 70 years, respectively," said a survey in 2007(18). There's lots of ifs and buts in arriving at such an estimate, yet the message clearly is: not forever.
Does that 200 years of coal sound reassuring? Polynesians came to Hawaii at least 800 years ago. We need a perspective reaching beyond our own brief personal lifetimes. After all the desperate attempts at technical fixes, human societies will have to simplify their way of life and shrink their numbers. It is perhaps not too much to suggest that the successors of the tribes that today are oppressed, exploited, undermined, pitied, patronised and romanticised could one day simply be what is left of humanity, provided all is not consumed in some Rapa Nui-like madness. While addressing issues of social justice now, we must also plan for that great transition.
The footage in the newspaper article below (from the Northern Territory in Australia in 1949) may be of the Malak (or Malak Malak) people, who traditionally live in the Daly River area
"Scientists at Binghamton University in New York sequenced the genomes of 35 residents of the remote equatorial islands of Melanesia and compared them to DNA extracted from ancient remains of Denisovans and Neanderthals... The genetic overlap of between the ancient hominids and modern Melanesians measured between 1.9 and 3.4 percent... The latest evidence suggests modern humans and early human relatives interbred on at least three separate occasions."
Via UPI - http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/03/17/Ancient-DNA-fragments-found-in-modern-humans/7591458241503/?spt=mps&or=5&sn=sn
Full paper in Science Magazine: http://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2016/03/16/science.aad9416.full
How Israel Kamakawiwo'ole recorded "Somewhere Over The Rainbow": It began at 3 in the morning. Milan Bertosa was at the end of a long day in his Honolulu recording studio.
"And the phone rings. It was a client of mine," Bertosa remembers. The client rattled off Israel's unpronounceable name and said he wanted to come in and record a demo. Bertosa said he was shutting down, call tomorrow. But the client insisted on putting Israel on the phone. "And he's this really sweet man, well-mannered, kind. 'Please, can I come in? I have an idea,' " Bertosa remembers Israel saying. Bertosa relented and gave Israel 15 minutes to get there. Soon, there was a knock at the door. "And in walks the largest human being I had seen in my life. Israel was probably like 500 pounds. And the first thing at hand is to find something for him to sit on." The building security found Israel a big steel chair. "Then I put up some microphones, do a quick sound check, roll tape, and the first thing he does is 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow.' He played and sang, one take, and it was over."
His brother Skippy died from complications of obesity, as had almost all of Israel's immediate family. He knew he was destined for a brief life... "I was scared when I lost my mother, my father, my brother, my sister," Israel told de Mello. "I guess this is gonna sound kind of weird, but I'm not scared for myself for dying. Because I believe all these places are temporary. This is just one shell. Because we Hawaiians live in both worlds. It's in our veins."
"Brudda Iz was the common people's Ali`i (high Chief), and they came out by the thousands (at least twenty thousand) to pay homage to a person that touched their hearts and spoke their language and said what was in their hearts and minds. They came to honor someone who came from "humble beginnings", tried everything good and bad, then became a powerful spokesman against drugs, youth gangs, and promoted non violence and the pursuit of the Hawaiian Culture and Self-determination in the form of Sovereignty."
- http://www.moolelo.com/iz.html
"Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono["The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness"]has been a motto of Hawaii for over 160 years. It is generally claimed that it became the motto of the Kingdom of Hawaii when King Kamehameha III spoke the words on July 31, 1843. This was the day that sovereignty was restored to Hawaii by proclamation of Queen Victoria following a five-month-long rogue British occupation. " - http://www.netstate.com/states/mottoes/hi_motto.htm
Sovereignty is still a live issue: Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_sovereignty_movement October 2015: http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/10/30/historic-election-could-return-sovereignty-to-native-hawaiians.html November 2015: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34680564 November 2015:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/supreme-court-halts-hawaiian-election_us_5658c6e8e4b08e945feb3ecc
- and there are activist blogs and sites running, e.g. http://www.hawaiiankingdom.info/
Image: NASA (from UNESCO page: http://www.environment.com.au/?p=229)
The Australian Government's Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority lists 45 tribes and groups that assert an interest in the world's greatest living natural formation:
Mapping dispersion of early humans using mitochondrial DNA "Regions coloured according to the gene pool: Australian lineages in yellow, Melanesians in pink and Filipinos in green." by Mauricio Lucioni Maristany, in Peru (21 January 2012) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dispersi%C3%B3n_del_haplogrupo_P_(ADNmt).PNG
At this time during the last ice age, Australia and Papua were one landmass. The migration coincided with the start of a wet period that saw central Australia much wetter and greener.
_______________________
But looking at P3 and P4, there is another:
"Modern human migrations in insular Asia according to mitochondrial DNA and non-recombining Y chromosome"
According to this article, Papua and Australia were reached by different routes some 51,000 years ago and much later there was some limited genetic exchange between NE Australia and eastern Papua.
When the seas rose again, the land masses separated and so did the subsequent migration histories.
"Tjitjingalla Corroboree performed in Alice Springs, 1901."
"The picture depicts one of the dance sequences of the Tjitjingalla as performed by Arrernte people at Alice Springs. Image: Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer Source: Museum Victoria"
Friday, 4 March 2016: Tahiti News announces the opening of a new high-biosafety laboratory at the Malardé Institute in Pape'ete.(1)
This is to help deal with the increased risk of infectious diseases that have spread to and from the Pacific region, such as Chikungunya (2), Zika (3) - which was first discovered in Uganda in 1947 (4), dengue (5), H1N1 influenza (6).
An earlier article from FranceTV (7) explains that highly dangerous diseases need to be handled in very safe facilities, which up till now did not exist in French Polynesia. Previously samples would have had to be sent to other laboratories abroad, which cost precious time.
The new lab on Tahiti is equipped to NSB3 containment standard. This is not the highest category - level 4 is for very high risk pathogens such Ebola, Lassa, Marburg etc and "other agents with unknown risks of pathogenicity and transmission" (8).
The top biosafety rating includes germ warfare research facilities such as the UK's Porton Down, listed on Wikipedia (9). One obvious reason why the "space suit" level 4 isn't appropriate for Tahiti is the risk of destructive tropical storms like the Category 5 Cyclone Winston that crashed into Fiji last month, killing 43 people (10). French Polynesia is 2,100 miles further east but is still not immune: in 2010 Cyclone Oli hit Tahiti with gusts up to 120 mph (11), and in 1997 Cyclone Osea wrecked 95% of the infrastructure of Maupiti, 200 miles NW of the main island (12).
So we needn't worry about an Andromeda Strain-type (13) accidental plague weapon release: it's not that kind of operation.
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(1) http://www.tahitinews.co/inauguration-dun-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique/
(2) http://www.cdc.gov/chikungunya/geo/ - very widespread globally
(3) http://www.cdc.gov/zika/geo/ - also spreading via mosquito in Samoa and Tonga, for example
(4) https://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2016/03/03/zika-connection-microcephaly-guillain-barre-hard-prove/
(5) http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/yellowbook/2016/infectious-diseases-related-to-travel/dengue - throughout S E Asia and the western Pacific
(6) http://www.gleamviz.org/2009/09/ - spread around the world by air travel in months
(7) http://la1ere.francetvinfo.fr/polynesie/tahiti/installation-d-un-laboratoire-de-haute-securite-biologique-l-institut-malarde-197064.html - dateline 9 Oct 2014, updated 25 Feb 2016
(8) http://www.labmanager.com/lab-health-and-safety/2010/12/biosafety-levels-1-2-3-4?fw1pk=2#.VtrtvX2LSt9
(9) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level#Biosafety_level_4
(10) http://fijione.tv/43-dead-after-tc-winston/
(11) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyclone_Oli#Tahiti_2
(13) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Andromeda_Strain
It's said that early settlers came to Easter Island (or Rapa Nui) from the Marquesas. The dating is very vague: as early as 300-400 CE, when some think (1) Hawaii was also first colonised, but possibly as late as 1200 CE - which would tie in with recent research suggesting the later time for New Zealand and Hawai'i (2).
The most ancient depiction of the Polynesian double-hulled voyaging canoe is found at Easter Island/Rapa Nui, scratched into rock at Orongo (3).
Papuan (red) and Austronesian (tan) languages distribution
Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papuan_languages#/media/File:Area_of_Papuan_languages.svg
Author: By Kwamikagami at en.wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5855201
