Lapita settlers and the Teouma cemetery

About 3,000 years ago people who made finely stamped Lapita pottery sailed east from the Bismarck Archipelago into islands no humans had reached. At Teouma, near Port Vila, a cemetery found in 2003 held 36 of these first settlers, some buried with pots. DNA from three women linked them to early farmers of Taiwan and the Philippines. Their descendants went on to settle Fiji, Tonga and Samoa.