ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2008
Dating the late prehistoric dispersal of Polynesians to New Zealand using the commensal Pacific rat.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 72 papers.
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72 citing papers in PubMed.
- Natural regulation of population size in large mammals by means of two new delayed density-dependent fertility mechanisms.Scientific reports · 2025Article
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- DNA and spores from coprolites reveal that colourful truffle-like fungi endemic to New Zealand were consumed by extinct moa (Dinornithiformes).Biology letters · 2025Article
- Ecological dynamics of moa extinctions reveal convergent refugia that today harbour flightless birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Reconstructing colonization dynamics to establish how human activities transformed island biodiversity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
- Thirty years of ancient DNA and the faunal biogeography of Aotearoa New Zealand: lessons and future directions.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2024Review
- Living Naked in the Cold: New Insights into Metabolic Feasibility in Primeval Cultures.Bioscience · 2023Review
- Abundance and Dynamics of Small Mammals in New Zealand: Sequential Invasions into an Island Ecosystem Like No Other.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- Pastoral agriculture, a significant driver of New Zealand's economy, based on an introduced grassland ecology and technological advances.Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2023Review
- A new chronology for the Māori settlement of Aotearoa (NZ) and the potential role of climate change in demographic developments.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Using metabarcoding and droplet digital PCR to investigate drivers of historical shifts in cyanobacteria from six contrasting lakes.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Genetic evidence for post-glacial expansion from a southern refugium in the eastern moa (Biology letters · 2022Article
- Climate change and alpine-adapted insects: modelling environmental envelopes of a grasshopper radiation.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
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- Taramea, a treasured Māori perfume of Ngāi Tahu fromJournal of the Royal Society of New Zealand · 2022Review
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- Population genomics of the critically endangered kākāpō.Cell genomics · 2021Article
- Integrating multi-taxon palaeogenomes and sedimentary ancient DNA to study past ecosystem dynamics.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Review
12 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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4 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The pristine island ecosystems of East Polynesia were among the last places on Earth settled by prehistoric people, and their colonization triggered a devastating transformation. Overhunting contributed to widespread faunal extinctions and the decline of marine megafauna, fires destroyed lowland forests, and the introduction of the omnivorous Pacific rat (Rattus exulans) led to a new wave of predation on the biota. East Polynesian islands preserve exceptionally detailed records of the initial prehistoric impacts on highly vulnerable ecosystems, but nearly all such studies are clouded by persistent controversies over the timing of initial human colonization, which has resulted in proposed settlement chronologies varying from approximately 200 B.C. to 1000 A.D. or younger. Such differences underpin radically divergent interpretations of human dispersal from West Polynesia and of ecological and social transformation in East Polynesia and ultimately obfuscate the timing and patterns of this process. Using New Zealand as an example, we provide a reliable approach for accurately dating initial human colonization on Pacific islands by radiocarbon dating the arrival of the Pacific rat. Radiocarbon dates on distinctive rat-gnawed seeds and rat bones show that the Pacific rat was introduced to both main islands of New Zealand approximately 1280 A.D., a millennium later than previously assumed. This matches with the earliest-dated archaeological sites, human-induced faunal extinctions, and deforestation, implying there was no long period of invisibility in either the archaeological or palaeoecological records.
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