Lidar image of an ancient city in the Tongatapu sila -PHILLIP PARTON/ANU
April 11 () –
New evidence from one of the Pacific's first 'cities' shows it was established seven centuries earlier than thought, specifically around the year 300 AD.
New research from the Australian National University (ANU) reached this conclusion after use aerial laser scanning to map archaeological sites on the island of Tongatapu in Tonga.
Lead author Dr Phillip Parton said the new timeline also indicates that urbanization in the Pacific was an indigenous innovation that developed before Western influence.
“Earth structures were being built at Tongatapu around 300 AD This is 700 years earlier than previously thought“Parton said. it's a statement.
“As settlements grew, they had to come up with new ways to support that growing population. This type of setup – what we call low-density urbanization – sets in motion enormous social and economic changes. “People interact more and do different types of work.”
Parton said studying urbanization in the Pacific has traditionally been complicated because of challenges in collecting data, but new technology has changed that.
“We were able to combine high-tech mapping and archaeological fieldwork to understand what was happening at Tongatapu. Having this type of information really contributes to our understanding of early Pacific societies.
“Urbanization is not an area that has been researched much until now. When people think of early cities, they usually think of old traditional European cities with compact housing and winding cobbled streets. This is a very different type of city.
“But it shows the contribution of the Pacific to urban science. We can see clues that Tongatapu influence spread across the southwestern Pacific Ocean between the 13th and 19th centuries.”
According to Parton, The collapse of this type of low-density urbanization in Tonga was largely due to the arrival of Europeans.
“It didn't collapse because the system was flawed; it had more to do with the arrival of Europeans and introduced diseases,” he said. “This is just the beginning in terms of early settlement in the Pacific. “There's probably still a lot left to discover.”
The study has been published in the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory.
