Fascinating South Seas Find - 60 Headless Corpses

ScienceDaily is reporting on a fascinating find in Vanuatu, an island nation located east of Australia...

"This is a groundbreaking discovery, as it is the oldest and biggest skeleton find ever in the Pacific Ocean; bigger cemeteries found further east are much younger," says Mads Ravn, head of research at the University of Stavanger's Museum of Archaeology in Norway.

Relatives did not treat their dead gently. Besides being headless, some of them had had their arms and legs broken, in order to fit into the coral reef cavities. Ravn suggests they may have been left to rot first, and buried later as skeletons.

Besides these coral reef burials there will be some DNA and tooth analysis. The article goes on to say:

Tooth analyses also revealed what these first islanders looked like.

"They were most probably fair skinned of Asian origin, unlike the present day Melanesians, whose skin is dark. The original settlers probably travelled on, or mixed up with the Melanesians that arrived later," "But future DNA studies and isotopic analyses may later confirm that," Ravn says.

It is believed that the first Pacific seafarers were spurred on by overpopulation, or by rules of inheritance which granted the first born child the right to inherit land, making it hard for younger siblings to settle down.