Prehistory and its perception in a Melanesian Archipelago: the New Caledonia example.(Research)

Introduction

The origins of the populations of the Pacific islands have provided a puzzling question for Westerners ever since the first discovery of the region by European navigators. The Spaniards crossing the waters of Island Melanesia at the beginning of the seventeenth century were amazed by the ethnic as well as the cultural diversity of the groups they encountered from one island to the next (Spriggs 1997: 229). More than a century later, Captain Cook, having reached the three corners of the Polynesian triangle formed by Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island, concluded that its inhabitants shared so many cultural and physical similarities that they must have ...

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