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Lapita culture

1600 BC – 500 BC
CultureOceania

The Neolithic Austronesian maritime culture whose distinctive dentate-stamped pottery marks the seaborne spread of Austronesian peoples across Island Melanesia and into Polynesia from c. 1600 BCE.

Transformed through cultural evolution and dispersal into the ancestral Polynesian, Micronesian, and Melanesian cultures rather than being dissolved by external conquest; in western Polynesia (Tonga-Samoa), Lapita communities gradually became Proto-Polynesian culture from roughly 1000–500 BCE onward, marked by the disappearance of decorated Lapita pottery.

Borders in 1600 BC · drawn from 1 sourced border frame
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Further reading

Sources