Staring out from an ancient piece of pottery, the mysterious face of a bearded man has given scientists a unique glimpse of what the first settlers of Fiji may have looked like.
Researchers say the "extraordinary discovery" is a vital clue in mapping out how the South Pacific came to be inhabited some 3,000 years ago, suggesting the first direct link to islands some thousands of kilometers away.
PHOTO: AFP
Thought to be the work of the Lapita people -- a long-lost race which originated near modern-day Taiwan then migrated to Polynesia -- the fragment is also at least 200 years older than any other piece found in Fiji.
"This is the first time that a clearly recognizable face design made in three dimensions on a piece of Lapita pottery has been found in Fiji," said a statement from the University of the South Pacific, based in the archipelago.
Preliminary analysis shows that the eerie-looking face consists of a prominent raised nose, the left eye and what might be eyelashes, said Roselyn Kumar of the University of the South Pacific's Institute of Applied Sciences.
There are also designs that suggest what might be head-hair, and crescent shapes on the base which were possibly intended to represent beard-hair.
The find therefore gives researchers an opportunity to gaze on the countenance of Fiji's first inhabitants, from whom modern Polynesians are believed to be descended.
But equally significant is that it is the first time that a facial design has been found on Lapita pottery outside a group of islands north of Papua New Guinea -- which are some 3,400km away from Fiji.
"As such it represents an extraordinary discovery," the university said.
The find made it possible to conclude that the early people of Fiji had at some stage come from the far-off island chain, named the Bismarck Archipelago, Geography Professor Patrick Nunn said.
It could go some way towards settling the long archaeological debate on the settling of Polynesia -- a vast triangle of islands from Hawaii in the north, to New Zealand in the south-east and Rapanui or Easter Island in the east.
The new face fragment was found near Natadola Beach, west of the Fijian capital Suva, in the tourist area of Viti Levu island.
Around 60 pottery pieces were found during excavations and radiocarbon dating established the shard with the face design was 3,260 years old -- whereas Fiji's next oldest-known Lapita settlement goes back only 3,000 years.
It was possible that Natadola was the first place of human settlement in Fiji, Nunn said.
He added that the analysis suggested that the designs were made using the unique Lapita technique of pot decoration known as dentate stamping, whereby lines are made from a series of tiny regularly-spaced dots applied to the pottery before it was fired.
"It was a very time-consuming and precise technique used to create intricate designs, perhaps associated with ancestor worship," he said.
More than 100 Lapita sites have been located over an area from New Guinea to western Polynesia, a distance of over 4,000km.
US archaeologist Edward Gifford gave the race their name after mishearing the indigenous name of a site in New Caledonia where he was working in 1952.
He had found shards of distinctive pottery there and recognized a link to similar finds to the north in New Guinea.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS