Interesting paper and DNA study of Vanuatu people. turn out all the people from western pacific all the way to Hawaii are descendant from Nan man But how come the Melanesian does not look anything like East Asian Well turn out there are mixing with the papuan and depending on the ratio of mixing some look like Papuan, some like Polynesian(Hawaii, Tahiti, etc) look more like East Asian interesting. But the language and culture following the Nanman or Austronesian
Where Did We Come From? The Origins Of The Ni-Vanuatu
- By Matthew Spriggs
- Oct 17, 2020
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Map showing the two earliest migrations to Vanuatu. The first, starting on the southern Chinese mainland 5000 years years ago reached Vanuatu 3000 years ago (3000BP). The second from New Britain occurred sometime between 2800 and 2400 years ago. The third migrations from Polynesia within the last 1000 years are not shown. The inset shows the proportions of East Asian (red) and New Britain Papuan (blue) ancestry in Vanuatu skeletons of different ages. From Lipson et al. 2018 in Current Biology.
Graph to show the mixing (admixture) between East Asians (Green) and New Britain Papuans (Blue) in various populations. Solomon Islands Papuan is pink, New Guinea Highlands Papuan is black. The Kankaneay are a Philippines people and the Atayal are a tribe of Indigenous Taiwanese. From Lipson et al. 2020, published yesterday in Current Biology.
Distribution of the Lapita culture across the Western Pacific. The earliest sites are in the Bismarck Archipelago. Map by Stuart Bedford.
Burial 10 at Teouma Lapita cemetery on Efate showing three skulls and a jaw placed on the skeleton's chest. The skull to the left and the one to the right were analysed in the new study and are almost exclusively East Asian in ancestry. Photo by Matthew Spriggs.


Most of us in Vanuatu know that the first people to arrive here were the ‘Lapita people’ some 3000 years ago. Before then the islands and plants and animals were here, but no people. But where did these Lapita people come from? And are Ni-Vanuatu their descendants?
Archaeologists, such as those of us at the Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta (VKS) and The Australian National University (ANU), have tried to answer the question often asked in the villages and nakamals when people find out who we are: “Where do we come from?”. We used to reply by talking about the very distinctive Lapita pottery decorations and their distribution in the Pacific with a trail back towards Island Southeast Asia where somewhat similar pottery is
It is no coincidence that both the first people to reach Vanuatu in early Lapita times and then the second group of New Britain Papuans both set off from the New Britain area, often called ‘The Lapita Homeland’. The Papuans were probably travelling on Lapita canoes or at least following the same known trade routes avoiding the Solomon Islands to reach Vanuatu directly. Over time the two groups inter-married and the descendants of this mixing are most Ni-Vanuatu of today, although the Papuan genetic ancestry is very much the dominant one. Ni-Vanuatu share 74 to 92 per cent of their genetic inheritance with New Britain Papuans, and only 8-24 per cent with those early Lapita individuals. But the New Britain Papuans were most likely Lapita people too, in the sense that they seem to have adopted Lapita culture and Austronesian languages on New Britain before they ever reached Vanuatu between about 2800 and 2400 years ago.