The new study makes clear the initial expansion of the Lapita people throughout PNG was far greater than previously thought.journal, is based on the discovery of a distinctive Lapita pottery sherd, a broken piece of pottery with sharp edges, on Brooker Island in 2017 that lead researcher Dr. Ben Shaw said was"like finding a needle in a haystack".
"For a long time, it was thought Lapita groups avoided most of Papua New Guinea because people were already living there. "We had almost given up as there was no indication of a past human presence in the top layers of soil, which was hard like concrete and everyone's hands were blistered and sore from digging. But thankfully we soon found fragments of pottery deeper down that gave us reason to keep going."