Post #220074 by TikiGardener on Fri, Mar 10, 2006 8:04 PM

HONOLULU - The first immigrants from the Polynesian islands to reach Easter Island arrived more recently than previously thought, according to research by a University of Hawaii archaeology professor published this week in the journal Science.

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The study helps bring perspective to the way humans migrated to the eastern islands of the Pacific, said lead author Terry Hunt on Friday.

Easter Island, also known as Rapa Nui, was not settled until around the year 1200, according to the study. That's between 400 and 800 years later than researchers originally estimated.

It's still believed that the Hawaiian Islands were settled between A.D. 800 and 1000, Hunt said.

"Somehow Hawaii got discovered early, even though it's on the outskirts," Hunt said. "Maybe the winds were more favorable."

The research suggests that Hawaii was part of a regional eastern Polynesian homeland connected by canoe routes and trade patterns. The islands included Hawaii, the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, the Society Islands, the Cook Islands and New Zealand.

Hunt conducted an extensive dig at the sand dunes of Anakena, the best canoe-landing spot on Easter Island.

His team tested charcoal samples and rat-eaten palm nuts. The date came back as A.D. 1250. Polynesians are believed to have brought the rats to the island.

Hunt said earlier dating work may have been flawed because it was based on items like old wood, which can skew dates too old.

Bishop Museum archaeologist Yosi Sinoto, a proponent of earlier settlement, is uneasy with the new work.

"Radiocarbon dates are a problem. Recent data are showing younger dates than before, but whether that is right or not, we need to see," he said.

The previous view of Easter Island was that humans lived peacefully there for several hundred years before the island's palm trees began to vanish and its environment decline.

Hunt's dating theory would mean that the island started losing its environmental stability from the moment humans arrived.

By the time the Dutch landed a few days after Easter in 1722, the settlers and the Polynesian rats had destroyed most of the island's trees and wiped out many species of birds.