21 A Consilience of Evidence
373
voyaging possibilities arose both from the warmer conditions of the Holocene and
the increased warmth and range of the West Pacific Warm Pool currents after the
drowning of Sundaland, and the separation of Australia and New Guinea, triggered
undersea tectonic activity that led to higher sea surfaces in the Pool and opened
up new patterns of flow. The volcanic heating of the Pool gave greater protection
from hypothermia, both directly and through its currents, offering a voyaging speed
that made it possible for mariners to sail longer ocean distances without landfall.
Spice Island post-flood maritime prehistory gives evidence of a growing mastery
of new skills and technologies which led to exploiting new voyaging and trading
possibilities, both within the Warm Pool and beyond. The development of the stable
double-outrigger, for example, made it possible both to exploit fast currents safely
and to sail with a following wind, facilitating the transference into colder oceans of
the long-distance voyaging skills learned, we suggest, in a West Pacific Warm Pool
voyaging nursery.
Because of volcanic underwater activity in the West Pacific Warm Pool following the last Ice Age flood, it seems possible that the major currents flowing out
of the West Pacific Warm Pool, in the period of first-wave exploration and settlement, and possibly in the second, may have been faster and warmer than they
are today. Our paradigm predicts that, for Spice Islanders in both these periods,
three of the four major currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm Pool would
have become ocean highways: trading and migration paths through two oceans. A
consilience of evidence involving economics, palaeo-oceanography, archaeology,
genetics, field archaeology and palaeodemography, evidence of cultural diffusion
and linguistic differentiation, and evidence from oral histories shows that the migration paths predicted by our paradigm were followed in both periods. Following
three of these four major currents, Spice Islanders were carried north through the
West Pacific Warm Pool through Micronesia to Japan and then east from Japan to
Hawaii and America with a landfall in southern California; south to Java and then
west to Madagascar and the east coast of Africa; south through Island Melanesia
and along the east coast of Australia till a diverging part of the current led them to
a landfall on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. We have shown
how a chosen exploration strategy of following these fast warm currents would have
made rapid and extensive expansion possible before the global cold period in about
1000 BC halted long-distance voyaging for 600 years. Inherent too in our paradigm
is the prediction that, when warm global conditions returned after 400 BC, Spice
Island explorers, traders and colonists would have followed the same warm currents across the same vast ocean distances to the same destinations and the same
landfalls.
Our paradigm not only successfully predicts the likely paths for both a first and
second wave of exploration and settlement but reveals the continuity of the Spice
Island maritime culture in Island Southeast Asia 25 generations after the Lapita
exodus to Near Oceania, Island Melanesia and Western Polynesia. We suggest
that awareness of this continuity has been lost through concentration on the history of the Lapita peoples, conceived of as having a late Taiwanese rather than an
ancient indigenous Spice Island origin, and lost through concentration on Western
373
voyaging possibilities arose both from the warmer conditions of the Holocene and
the increased warmth and range of the West Pacific Warm Pool currents after the
drowning of Sundaland, and the separation of Australia and New Guinea, triggered
undersea tectonic activity that led to higher sea surfaces in the Pool and opened
up new patterns of flow. The volcanic heating of the Pool gave greater protection
from hypothermia, both directly and through its currents, offering a voyaging speed
that made it possible for mariners to sail longer ocean distances without landfall.
Spice Island post-flood maritime prehistory gives evidence of a growing mastery
of new skills and technologies which led to exploiting new voyaging and trading
possibilities, both within the Warm Pool and beyond. The development of the stable
double-outrigger, for example, made it possible both to exploit fast currents safely
and to sail with a following wind, facilitating the transference into colder oceans of
the long-distance voyaging skills learned, we suggest, in a West Pacific Warm Pool
voyaging nursery.
Because of volcanic underwater activity in the West Pacific Warm Pool following the last Ice Age flood, it seems possible that the major currents flowing out
of the West Pacific Warm Pool, in the period of first-wave exploration and settlement, and possibly in the second, may have been faster and warmer than they
are today. Our paradigm predicts that, for Spice Islanders in both these periods,
three of the four major currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm Pool would
have become ocean highways: trading and migration paths through two oceans. A
consilience of evidence involving economics, palaeo-oceanography, archaeology,
genetics, field archaeology and palaeodemography, evidence of cultural diffusion
and linguistic differentiation, and evidence from oral histories shows that the migration paths predicted by our paradigm were followed in both periods. Following
three of these four major currents, Spice Islanders were carried north through the
West Pacific Warm Pool through Micronesia to Japan and then east from Japan to
Hawaii and America with a landfall in southern California; south to Java and then
west to Madagascar and the east coast of Africa; south through Island Melanesia
and along the east coast of Australia till a diverging part of the current led them to
a landfall on the west coast of the South Island of New Zealand. We have shown
how a chosen exploration strategy of following these fast warm currents would have
made rapid and extensive expansion possible before the global cold period in about
1000 BC halted long-distance voyaging for 600 years. Inherent too in our paradigm
is the prediction that, when warm global conditions returned after 400 BC, Spice
Island explorers, traders and colonists would have followed the same warm currents across the same vast ocean distances to the same destinations and the same
landfalls.
Our paradigm not only successfully predicts the likely paths for both a first and
second wave of exploration and settlement but reveals the continuity of the Spice
Island maritime culture in Island Southeast Asia 25 generations after the Lapita
exodus to Near Oceania, Island Melanesia and Western Polynesia. We suggest
that awareness of this continuity has been lost through concentration on the history of the Lapita peoples, conceived of as having a late Taiwanese rather than an
ancient indigenous Spice Island origin, and lost through concentration on Western