The origins of the Polynesians has been a hotly contested issue for many years, but it now seems clear that they have close genetic and linguistic bonds with the people of central and eastern Indonesia and the Philippines.
They have also been influenced by the largely agricultural populations of Melanesia in the western Pacific, particularly Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
The biological, linguistic and technological ancestry of later Polynesian cultures clearly lies in the eastern islands of South-East Asia. Around 4000 BC the population of southern China expanded due to developments in the cultivation of rice.
Colonists moved from the mainland to Taiwan and the Philippines, and then to the islands of central and eastern Indonesia. This expansion formed the basis for the Polynesian dispersal around 1500 BC and the rise of the 'Lapita' culture, so-called from the name given to its distinctive pottery.
