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<< Text Pages >> Teouma Ancient Cemetery - Barrow Cemetery in Pacific Islands

Submitted by bat400 on Friday, 01 January 2010  Page Views: 12689

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Teouma Ancient Cemetery
Country: Pacific Islands
NOTE: This site is 14.721 km away from the location you searched for.

Type: Barrow Cemetery

Latitude: 17.81S  Longitude: 168.430000E
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
no data Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
no data Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
no data Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
no data
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Ancient Cemetery on Efate Island, Vanuatu.
Cemetery ca. 1000 BC. Thought to have been from the earliest settlers to the islands, known as the Lapita People.

Note: More on the large prehistoric cemetery discovered on Vanatu, see latest comment
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Naiwe Beach at Blue Water
Naiwe Beach at Blue Water
Naiwe Beach at Blue Water
20180422_131954-EFFECTS
Turtle and starfish
Starfish close up

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Nearby sites listing. In the following links * = Image available
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"Teouma Ancient Cemetery" | Login/Create an Account | 4 News and Comments
  
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Giant turtle's demise the fault of humans, study says by coldrum on Wednesday, 25 August 2010
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Giant turtle's demise the fault of humans, study says

Humans helped drive a species of giant turtle to extinction almost 3,000 years ago, according to a study in PNAS.

It is one of the first cases that clearly shows that humans played a role in the demise of the giant, extinct animals known as "megafauna".

An Australian research team discovered turtle leg bones - but not shells or skulls - on an island of Vanuatu.

The bones date to just 200 years after humans' arrival, suggesting they were hunted to extinction for their meat.

However, the turtles lived far longer than other megafauna - which included the famed woolly mammoth; while Australian megafauna is thought to have died out almost 50,000 years ago, it appears that these turtles survived for far longer - until the arrival of a people known as the Lapita.

Debate over what caused the megafauna to die out has raged for 150 years, since Darwin first spotted the remains of giant ground sloths in Chile. Possible causes have ranged from human influence to climate change in the past, even to a cataclysmic meteor strike.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS).
'Enormous pressure'
Leg bone of giant turtle (Image: PNAS) Most of the bones discovered were leg bones

The research team, led by Professor Matthew Spriggs from the Australian National University in Canberra, discovered a graveyard full of bones on a site on the island of Efate that was known to be home to a Lapita settlement.

The turtles, of a never-before-seen species in the genus Meiolania, had a length of two-and-a-half metres and sported fearsome horns on their heads.

But the bones were overwhelmingly from the creatures' legs - their only fleshy and edible part. The team went on to date the bones, finding the last ones occurring in layers of sediment that were laid down about 200 years later than the arrival of the Lapita.

Professor Chris Turney of the University of Exeter in the UK called the paper a "really good piece of work", second only to a similarly damning find in New Zealand confirming humans' role in the extinction of the giant birds known as moa.

"It's a really lovely example - you have this amazing beast that's been around for tens of millions of years surviving as a relic population on this island. Then these people arrived and they basically disappear in a couple of hundred years," he told BBC News.

"When people turn up they put these populations under enormous pressure - they might not be giving the final, killer blow but they're adding another level of stress. It looks like these fantastic turtles are another example."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10970082
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Sixty Headless Skeletons 3,000 Years Old Discovered in Pacific Ocean by Andy B on Friday, 01 January 2010
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When a team of archaeologists began excavating an old coral reef in Vanuatu in 2008 and 2009, they soon discovered it had served as a cemetery in ancient times. So far, 71 buried individuals have been recorded, giving new information on the islands' inhabitants and their funeral rites.

"This is a groundbreaking discovery, as it is the oldest and biggest skeleton find ever in the Pacific Ocean; bigger cemeteries found further east are much younger," says Mads Ravn, head of research at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology in Norway.

Relatives did not treat their dead gently. Besides being headless, some of them had had their arms and legs broken, in order to fit into the coral reef cavities. Ravn suggests they may have been left to rot first, and buried later as skeletons.

The local museum's staff of the Vanuatu Culture Centre, a range of researchers, lead by Stuart Bedford and Matthew Spriggs from the Australian National University (ANU), forms an international and cross-disciplinary team, working to gather information about the Pacific islands' inhabitants. Mads Ravn's expertise in migration and colonising over great distances, as well as in digital excavation documentation and recording, makes him an important contributor to this cooperative effort.

Coral reef tomb

Vanuatu is a nation of 83 islands, located 1,750 kilometres east of Australia. The soil contains remnants from a violent volcano eruption, believed to have taken place exactly 3000 years ago. Scientists have found no sign of human activity predating this event.

"The way these people are buried, bears witness of a body concept which is different from the whole-body concept in Europe the last 5000 years," says Mads Ravn.

"There was no sharp divide between life and death, and the dead were participating in the present. A few decades ago in Bali and other Pacific islands, people were putting their ancestors' skulls on display in their homes," he adds.

This may explain why the Vanuatu skeletons are headless. One skeleton was found with five skulls on his chest, and Ravn believes the heads may have been used in ancestral rituals.

The islanders usually removed the volcanic ash before burying their dead under ashes and sand. Each grave is marked with a pottery jar decorated with intricate patterns, possibly stamped by small pieces of worked bone. The ceramic also depicts faces and eyes, perhaps images of their ancestors.

"I have never seen such beautiful artefacts before. These must be the world's finest pottery jars of that age," says Ravn.

Long distance voyages

Vanuatu's first inhabitants probably came from Taiwan and the Philippines, having travelled thousands of miles by outrigger canoes equipped with sails and big enough to contain large families. The canoers settled on the uninhabited islands, and supported themselves by fishing and cultivating the land. Giant tortoises were abundant and easy to catch. Volcanic ashes from 3000 years ago contain many tracks of tortoises, but these are entirely non-existent 100 years on.

"It is very interesting to observe the consequences of human beings taking possession over virgin land," says Ravn.

Over a few centuries, several species went extinct -- the giant tortoise among them. Traces of mussel shells also bear witness of excessive consumption. The shells diminish in size as the sediments get younger. According to Ravn, the inhabitants quite simply overextended their resources.

Strong and adventurous

The skeletons' DNA profiles should be ready later this winter, and the scientists hope to uncover kinship links among the dead. But there are already some findings of their health condition.

"People were suffering from gout and caries -- both diseases associated with the good life. But we can tell from our samples that the inhabitants were laborious and

Read the rest of this post...
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Pacific Island Gout comes from Asian Ancestors by bat400 on Monday, 31 December 2007
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High rates of gout among Mâori and Pacific Island men may have a genetic basis going back thousands of years to the time when Polynesia and Melanesia were being colonized from South East Asia.

University of Otago Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology biological anthropologist Dr. Hallie Buckley has been working with colleagues from the Australian National University and CNRS in Paris to analyze skeletons from a 3,000-year-old cemetery in Vanuatu.

Her paper on possible gouty arthritis amongst the Lapita people — so-called because of their distinctive decorated pottery known as the Lapita style — has been published in the October edition of Current Anthropology.

“We examined the bones of 20 skeletons from the first two field seasons using radiography and other techniques and found erosive lesions or damage to the joints of seven of them. The pattern of these lesions suggests they were most likely the result of gouty arthritis,” said Buckley.

“This surprising finding suggests a very early antiquity of gout in the Pacific Islands and may help to explain the unusually high incidence of hyperuricaemia and gout in many modern Pacific Island populations, including New Zealand Mâori,” she said.

Buckley also said the Lapita people’s diet tended to consist of local plants and seafood. That purine rich seafood can set off attacks of gout in people who are already susceptible to the condition.


For more, see this link.
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Headless skeletons hold key to origin of Polynesians by bat400 on Tuesday, 13 March 2007
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Submitted by coldrum---

Archaeologists in Vanuatu have unearthed an ancient cemetery containing the headless skeletons of what are believed to be the earliest known ancestors of Pacific Islanders.

The 3000-year-old remains are those of the Lapita people, who colonised Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, Tonga and Samoa when the Pharaohs reigned in Egypt, says Professor Matthew Spriggs of the Australian National University, who led the dig.

He expects tests to confirm that the skeletons belong to the ancestors of Polynesian groups like Maori, Tongans and Samoans.
"Up until now people have speculated about the origins of the Polynesians, the origins of the Lapita people, and who were the Lapita people. We've actually got the Lapita people."

The Vanuatu National Museum asked the Australian university to investigate the site after it was disturbed by bulldozers clearing the way for a prawn farm. It was excavated in three stages over 2004, 2005 and 2006.

Of 70 individuals, only seven skulls have been found, including three on one man's chest, three between the legs of another man and one in a pot.

Professor Spriggs says it is likely the heads were removed after burial. Until about 100 years ago when European missionaries arrived in the Pacific, it was common practice for islanders to let the flesh rot away from the head of a dead person and then place the skull in a shrine. "The head was seen as the seat of the soul, so it's the most important part."

Professor Spriggs says scientists in New Zealand and American laboratories will test the bones for traces of ancient DNA which, together with skull measurements, may solve the riddle of the origins of the Polynesian people.

Current theories say the Polynesians originally came from Southeast Asia via eastern Indonesia, the Philippines and ultimately Taiwan.

- AAP

For more, see New Zealand Herald.
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