| Description |
LAPITA
In 1917, Maurice Piroutet a French geologist discovered pottery shards along the coast of Fouē in the province of Konē in New Caledonia. The design was similar to the tapa motifs in the Lau group today. The pottery fragments were named after the beach from it was found. The name then was extended to all places in the Pacific in which the shards were found.
HOW OLD ARE THE RELICS.
There is geological and archaeological evidence of a certain group of people who navigated the Pacific Ocean with distinctive pottery design known as Lapita. Science and carbon dating can determine the age of a relic and the year in which the owner inhabited an island.
WHO WERE THE LAPITA PEOPLE?
Researchers found that prior to the habitation of the Pacific, a group of people called the Austronesians existed. They are identified through their language family. During those days, the language was not so diverse as today. 3,500 years ago they navigated the Pacific Ocean with their double-hulled canoes called the Drua. Evidence stipulated that these people originated from South China. They brought with them a distinctive pottery design, domesticated animals such as pigs, chicken, dogs and geminated trees such as breadfruit. They are the inhabitants of today’s Madagascar, South East Asia, Bismarck Archipelago near Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Samoa, Hawaii, Rapanui and New Zealand. |
| Social and cultural significance |
LINGUISTIC SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE ITAUKEI LANGUAGE AND THE AUSTRONISIAN MIGRATION
Linguists in the Pacific commonly agree that they originated from South East Asia. Most refer to Taiwan, some refer to Malaysia. Most Taiwanese today are Chinese, they migrated from China to Taiwan over a century ago. Indigenous Taiwanese and Pacific Islanders share common linguistic features.
The early ancestors migrated from South Asia about 5000 years ago. They migrated eastwards settling in New Britain, and to the north in Papua New Guinea. While settling in New Britain pottery making was introduced where they started to create different designs, those designs are so called Lapita. Our ancestors were also called Lapita. They mastered voyaging skills - navigation, fishing, line fishing and many more including building long houses, animal husbandry and planting dalo and yams.
A millennium later they drifted eastwards and inhabited Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Some drifted and settled further to the East. They sailed towards the sunrise toward Fiji. In the proto-Austronesian language, viti or fiti means; island where the sun rises’. This word has disappeared in many places, but has been used in Tonga, Samoan, New Zealand and many more.
WHICH ISLAND DID THE FIRST SETTLERS COME ACROSS?
From their paths from Solomon Islands or Vanuatu, it is believed that they first saw Viwa the island beyond Waya. Viwa is a small Island with no hill – settlers could easily see how water was scarce there. For that reason it is believed they first settled instead on Naviti Island due to its massiveness. The name of the island evidently means ‘island of the east’.
Later on, the settlers discovered Naviti Island was surrounded by two bigger islands. On the southern side of the Yasawa island, the only island that never ran out of water. Its name means Island with water. For Lapita ancestors the suffix –a means ‘the place for’ ‘Wai-a’, therefore is the old word meaning place for water (Waya today)
This manner of naming using this extension –a,-na,-ma is common in Fiji and other parts of the Pacific specifying what is common in that island, or what it is known for. Here are few examples: Kanacea meaning ‘island of kanace’ (mullet), and Vawa (in Yasawa) ‘place of Vau’, Vutuna ‘placed filled with vutu’, Jioma the island of jio (dio in Kadavu dialect).
The second bigger island towards the east of Naviti and Waya was named ‘Navitilevu’ due to its location where the sun rose over its massive land, meaning the big island in the east where the sun rises. This refers to the current mainland Navitilevu or Vitilevu.
Some later migrated 3,000 years ago where they settled in Samoa and later Tonga (‘meaning the island in the south). Some Samoan settlers migrated east a millennium later, where they settled on an island now known as Tahiti. Two millennium ago it was not named Tahiti, but as ‘Tafiti’. This given name has the prefix ‘ta-‘, the noun phrase article or ‘the’ in English with ‘fiti’ – meaning where the sun rises - as in Fiji. Thus, Fiji and Tahiti are namesakes,’ meaning island where the sun rises. The difference is that Fiji was named by early Solomon and Vanuatu Islanders where as Tahiti was named by early Samoan settlers. |
