Ancient voyagers who settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean

那些在太平洋遥远岛屿上定居的古代航海者们

位于太平洋瓦努阿图群岛中埃法特（Efate）岛上的一项重要考古发现揭示出一个古老的航海民族所留下的遗迹，他们是今日波利尼西亚人的远古祖先。此处遗址为人所知纯属偶然。一个农耕者在刨挖一处废弃种植园土地的时候掘开了一座坟墓——它是这处约有3000年之久的墓园中的几十个坟墓里出土的第一座。此处是太平洋群岛上迄今为止所发现的最古老墓园，葬身其中的遗骸属于考古学家称为Lapita人的一个古老民族。

An important archaeological discovery on the island of Éfaté in the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu has revealed traces of an ancient seafaring people, the distant ancestors of today's Polynesians. The site came to light only by chance. An agricultural worker, digging in the grounds of a derelict plantation, scraped open a grave – the first of dozens in a burial ground some 3,000 years ago. It is the oldest cemetery ever fund in the Pacific islands, and it harbors the remains of an ancient people archaeologists call the Lapita.

他们是蓝色水面上的一群大胆的探险家，使用简陋的独木舟就敢泛舟大洋之上四处漂泊。然而他们并不仅仅是探索者。他们也是开辟疆土的先锋，随身携带着建造新生活所需要的一切物品——他们的牲畜、芋头幼苗和石质工具。在几个世纪的时间里，Lapita人将他们那个世界的疆土开辟成了从巴布亚新几内亚的丛林密布火山的地区直到汤加的最偏远的珊瑚礁外岛的广袤区域。

Lapita人所留下的关于他们自己的线索珍贵且稀少，但埃法特岛极大地扩充了研究者现有的信息量。到目前为止已有62人的遗骸被发掘出来，而且考古学家还惊喜地发现了六个完整的Lapita罐子。其他物品包括一个Lapita骨灰瓮，瓮口边沿上装饰着鸟类造型就像正在仔细端详其中封存的人类遗骸。“这项发现极其重要，”Matthew Spriggs这样说道，此人是澳大利亚国立大学的考古教授，也是正在该遗址进行挖掘工作的国际团队负责人，“因为它决定性地确认了这些骸骨是Lapita人的。”

They were daring blue-water adventurers who used basic canoes to rove across the ocean. But they were not just explorers. They were also pioneers who carried with them everything they would need to build new lives – their livestock, taro seedlings and stone tools. Within the span of several centuries, the Lapita stretched the boundaries of their world from the jungle-clad volcanoes of Papua New Guinea to the loneliest coral outliers of Tonga.

从这些人类骸骨中提取的DNA也许可以帮助解答太平洋考古史上最令人迷惑不解的问题之一：太平洋岛民们到底是来自于相同的一个源头还是有许多出处？是只有从亚洲某个地点出发向外的一次大迁徒，还是有来自不同地点的数次迁徒？“这次发现代表了我们到目前为止最好的机会，” Spriggs说，“来探索Lapita人到底是谁，他们来自哪里，以及在今天与他们血缘最亲近的后代是谁。”

有这样一个经久的问题一直有待考古学给出答案：Lapita人是如何在他们那个年代完成了可与登月相比拟的壮举，而且还反复进行了许多次？没人发现过他们的任何一艘独木舟或索具，而这些东西可以揭示出独木舟是如何航行的。后世波利尼西亚人的口头历史和传统也并未提供任何线索，因为早在它们能够追溯到Lapita人那个遥远时代之前就已经经过了太多演绎变形，成了神话传说。

The Lapita left precious few clues about themselves, but Éfaté expands the volume of data available to researchers dramatically. The remains of 62 individuals have been uncovered so far, and archaeologists were also thrilled to find six complete Lapita pots. Other items included a Lapita burial urn with modeled birds arranged on the rim as though peering down at the human remains sealed inside. 'It's an important discovery,' says Matthew Spriggs, professor of archaeology at the Australian National University and head of the international team digging up the site, 'for it conclusively identifies the remains as Lapita.'

“我们唯一可以确定的是，Lapita人的独木舟可以载他们漂洋过海，而他们也有本领驾驭它们，”奥克兰大学的考古教授Geoff Irwin这样说。他说，那些航海技能是在几千年的时光里由更早的航海者们发展和传承下来的，他们摸索着踏遍了西太平洋群岛，并在附近的岛屿之间短途穿梭。然而，真正的探险还未开启，而是知道他们的Lapita后代航行出了可见陆地的范围、四周都是一片天水茫茫才算。这样做对于当时的他们来说必定就像登月之于今日的网名一样困难。这毫无疑问是的他们明显有别于他们的祖先，但又是什么给了他们这种勇气来启动如此风险重重的航程呢？

Irwin注意到，Lapita人驶入太平洋的航程是一路向东的，与当地盛行的信风逆向而行。他认为，那些纠缠不休的顶头风也许是他们航行成功的关键。“他们可以向着未知走上几天并评估该海域，同时明确地知道；如果他们什么也没有找到，随时都可以调转头来，搭乘信风快速地返回家园。这就是整个故事得以成功进行的原因。”一旦身处外海，有经验的航海者们必定可以观察到充足的线索来追随着回到陆地：海鸟，被浪潮冲刷到海中的椰子和小树枝，以及下午时分地平线上空堆叠起来的云层——通常意味着远处有座岛屿。

DNA teased from these human remains may help answer one of the most puzzling questions in Pacific anthropology: did all Pacific islanders spring from one source or many? Was there only one outward migration from a single point in Asia, or several from different points? 'This represents the best opportunity we've had yet,' says Spriggs, 'to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came from, and who their closest descendants are today.'

无论出航成功与否，对于返回的探索者们来说，他们所定居群岛的地理条件都会为他们提供一张安全网。如果没有这一条件作为支持，过度超越他们的本土港湾范围、迷失航向以及余生都在外漂泊都是很容易发生的情况。举例来说，瓦努阿图从北向南绵亘500多英里，它那几十座彼此遥相对望的岛屿为搭乘信风回家的航海者们组成了一道有力的后援。

澳大利亚国立大学的史前历史学教授Atholl Anderson指出，所有这些设想都是在假定了这样一个关键细节的前提下进行的：Lapita人已经掌握了顶凤航行的先进技艺。“没有任何证据能够证明他们有能力做到这类事情，” Anderson说道，“一直存在这样一个假设，认为他们确实有此能力，还有人以此假设为基础建造了独木舟来重现那些早期航行。但是没有人确切地知道他们的独木舟长寿面样子以及如何操作。”

There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide any answers: how did the Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon landing, many times over? No-one has found one of their canoes or any rigging, which could reveal how the canoes were sailed. Nor do the oral histories and traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they turn into myths long before they reach as far back in time as the Lapita.

Anderson并没有把所有赞誉都归功于人类的技艺，而是提出了风向的偶然因素。他认为，厄尔尼诺这种在今天仍然影响太平洋地区的气候扰动，也许在推动Lapita人的散布中助了一臂之力。他指出，从太平洋周边海域缓慢生长的珊瑚礁中所获取的气候数据表明，大约在Lapita人四下探索开拓的时期，正好出现过一系列频繁的、非比寻常的厄尔尼诺现象。通过每次延续好几周时间逆转了通常从东到西的信风吹动方向，这些“超级厄尔尼诺”有可能带着Lapita人进行了事先并无计划的长期航行。

无论他们是如何做到的，Lapita人都将自己的活动范围拓展到了横跨太平洋的三分之一，然后又出于只有他们自己才知道的原因而停下了脚步。前方还绵延着太平洋的三分之一，然后又出于只有他们自己才知道的原因而停下了脚步。前方还绵延着太平洋中部海域的辽阔空旷区域，也许他们分布得已经过于稀疏，无力再向远处探索。他们的总人口大概从未超过几千人，而在他们快速向东的迁徒中已经遇到了成百上千座岛屿——单在斐济一地就已超过300个。

'All we can say for certain is that the Lapita find canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and they had the ability to sail them,' says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University of Auckland. Those sailing skills, he says, were developed and passed down over thousands of years by earlier mariners who worked their way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific, making short crossings to nearly islands. The real adventure didn't begin, however, until their Lapita descendants sailed out of sight of land, with empty horizons on every side. This must have been as difficult for them as landing on the moon is for us today. Certainly it distinguished them from their ancestors, but what gave them the courage to launch out on such risky voyages?

The Lapita's thrust into the Pacific was eastward, against the prevailing trade winds, Irwin notes. Those nagging headwinds, he argues, may have been the key to their success. 'They could sail out for days into the unknown and assess the area, secure in the knowledge that if they didn't find anything, they could turn about and catch a swift ride back on the trade winds. This is what would have made the whole thing work.' Once out there, skilled seafarers would have detected abundant leads to follow to land: seabirds, coconuts and twigs carried out to sea by the tides, and the afternoon pile-up of clouds on the horizon which often indicates an island in the distance.

For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes would have provided a safety net. Without this to go by, overshooting their home ports, getting lost and sailing off into eternity would have been all too easy. Vanuatu, for example, stretches more than 500 miles in a northwest-southeast trend, its scores of intervisible islands forming a backstop for mariners riding the trade winds home.

All this presupposes one essential detail, says Atholl Anderson, professor of prehistory at the Australian National University: the Lapita had mastered the advanced art of sailing against the wind. 'And there's no proof they could do any such thing,' Anderson says. 'There has been this assumption they did, and people have built canoes to re-create those early voyages based on that assumption. But nobody has any idea what their canoes looked like or how they were rigged.'

Rather than give all the credit to human skill, Anderson invokes the winds of chance. El Niño, the same climate disruption that affects the Pacific today, may have helped scatter the Lapita, Anderson suggests. He points out that climate data obtained from slow-growing corals around the Pacific indicate a series of unusually frequent El Niños around the time of the Lapita expansion. By reversing the regular east-to-west flow of the trade winds for weeks at a time, these 'super El Niños' might have taken the Lapita on long unplanned voyages.

However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific, then called it quits for reasons known only to them. Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific and perhaps they were too thinly stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more than a few thousand in total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands – more than 300 in Fiji alone.