clipped from: www.iht.com CANBERRA: A 3,000-year-old burial site in Vanuatu containing 60 headless skeletons and skulls in pots is helping end the mystery over colonization of the Pacific and the first Polynesians, archaeologists said Tuesday.
The remains have enabled scientists to reconstruct the lives and habits of the seafaring Lapita people, who settled Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa from Melanesian islands scattered to the west.
The Lapita are believed to be ancestral Polynesians, moving east from Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands over thousands of miles of ocean, taking with them their crops and animals.
None of the remains had an attached skull and the heads may have been removed after burial, the researchers said, with the grouping of three skulls possibly due to mystical significance the islanders had for the number.