HR: 17:40h
AN: GC54C-02    [Abstracts]
TI: Climate Variability and the Settlement of Oceania
AU: * Avis, C
EM: caavis@uvic.ca
AF: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Gordon Head Complex PO Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 3P6, Canada
AU: Montenegro, A
EM: alvaro@ocean.seos.uvic.ca
AF: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Gordon Head Complex PO Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 3P6, Canada
AU: Weaver, A J
EM: wlewis@uvic.ca
AF: School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Gordon Head Complex PO Box 3055 STN CSC, Victoria, BC V8W 3P6, Canada
AB: The initial discovery and settlement of the islands of Oceania is an important issue in Pacific anthropology. Settlement of this region generally proceeded against the direction of the dominant trade winds leading to questions concerning the degree of maritime skill possessed by early Pacific mariners. We use a computer simulation to test two basic exploration strategies: drift voyages and downwind sailing, focusing on the region of the initial eastward expansion into Oceania by the Lapita people. Simulations are driven by high resolution surface wind and current data from atmosphere and ocean models forced by real observations and which capture the high degree of seasonal and interannual variability in the region. We find that climatic variability associated with the Australian monsoon circulation and El Nino plays a key role in facilitating eastward crossings. Both drift and sailing voyages can account for the discovery of all the islands in the Lapita region based on initial starting points in the Bismarck and Solomon archipelagos. Many of our findings differ from an important, earlier modeling study performed by Levison et al. (1973).
DE: 0473 Paleoclimatology and paleoceanography (3344, 4900)
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 4922 El Nino (4522)
DE: 9355 Pacific Ocean
SC: Global Environmental Change [GC]
MN: 2007 Fall Meeting