Ever wonder what our Polynesian ancestors looked like? Well meet Mana…a woman believed to

Ever wonder what our Polynesian ancestors looked like? Well meet Mana…a woman believed to be a part of the Lapita era, progenitors of the Polynesians. The face of Mana was reconstructed using a model of her skull which was discovered by a member of a research team from USP and the Fiji Museum which excavated an early human settlement at Naitabale in the south of Moturiki Island , central Fiji in 2002.

This is the first time that the skull of a Lapita-era skeleton had been so well preserved that it was possible to faithfully reconstruct the head. This therefore represents the first time that the face of a person from the Lapita era (1350 BC to 650 BC) has ever been seen. It is the face of one of the very first people to have lived in the Fiji Islands .

Her skeleton was determined to be that of a female who had died between the ages of 40 and 60 years. She appeared to have been 161-164 cm tall and to have given birth to at least one child. She was probably right-handed. Mana’s body would have been tall, muscular and tough. Like other Lapita-age skeletons, Mana’s body was adapted to heavy mastication, and strenuous physical activity involving the neck, arms and feet. The roots of Mana’s teeth were stained brown, perhaps from chewing roots of kava. The results suggested that Mana lived in the year 800 BC, perhaps earlier.

The Lapita people were the first humans to colonise the western tropical Pacific Islands . They remain visible as a distinctive cultural group for only a few hundred years, starting about 1350 BC in the Bismarck Archipelago of Papua New Guinea and ending about 650 BC in Fiji , Samoa and Tonga . Around the beginning of this period, from bases in Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands , they set out eastwards on intentional voyages of colonisation. They encountered groups of islands ( New Caledonia , Vanuatu , Fiji , Tonga and Samoa ) that were not occupied by humans.

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