“Whoever they were, the so-called Lapita people appeared to be the first people on the scene in these places, and this, in turn, meant that not only were they the true pioneers of the remote Pacific – the first people to sail over the horizon to islands that were too far away to see – but they were also the first people to reach the Polynesian Triangle. And this meant that they were the immediate precursors and ancestors of the Polynesians.”
