science & techanalysisSAPIENS55,000–50,000 years ago · Waigeo Island, Raja Ampat, West Papua
How and When Did Humans First Move Into the Pacific?
Researchers excavating Mololo Cave on Waigeo Island in West Papua have found that people lived there by at least 55,000 years ago, making it one of the earliest known sites of human seafaring into the Pacific. The team recovered a resin artifact dating to between 50,000 and 55,000 years ago, the earliest known use of tree resin by people outside Africa. The resin was cut from a tree, allowed to harden, then snapped into shape, and may have been used as fuel. The animal bones show that people hunted ground-dwelling birds and marsupials, adapting to life in the rainforest as well as the coast. The finding supports a northern route along the equator rather than a southern route through Timor to Australia.
Researchers date the layers of the cave using radiocarbon dating, which measures the decay of carbon isotopes in organic material. Stone tools, bones and charcoal found in each layer show how long people stayed there. Comparing those dates with sea-level records helps show which routes were possible for ancient seafarers.
The timing of this migration matters for how quickly humans spread out of Africa and what happened to the large animals and other human species in the region. Earlier dates suggest sophisticated seafaring well before most estimates. The West Papua record is still poorly studied, so this is an important addition.
background
Human migration is the movement of people from one place to another, with intentions of settling, permanently or temporarily, at a new location (geographic region). The movement often occurs over long distances and from one country to another (external migration), but internal migration (within a single country) is the dominant form of human migration globally.
Migration is often associated with better human capital at both individual and household level, and with better access to migration networks, facilitating a possible second move. It has a high potential to improve human development, and some studies confirm that migration is the most direct route out of poverty. Age is also important for both work and non-work migration. People may migrate as individuals, in family units or in large groups. There are four major forms of migration: invasion, conquest, colonization and emigration/immigration.
From Wikipedia: Human migration (CC BY-SA 4.0) ↗
SAPIENS · CC BY-ND
