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Letters to Nature

Nature 331, 707-709 (25 February 1988) | doi:10.1038/331707a0; Received 18 December 1987; Accepted 13 January 1988

Pleistocene dates for the human occupation of New Ireland, northern Melanesia

Jim Allen*, Chris Gosden*, Rhys Jones† & J. Peter White‡

  1. *Department of Archaeology, La Trobe University, Melbourne,Australia
  2. †Department of Prehistory, Australian National University,Canberra, Australia
  3. ‡Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, Sydney,Australia
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Pleistocene dates from three cave sites indicate the human capacity to colonise across two oceanic straits to the east of a former Tasmania–Australia–New Guinea continent by 33 kyr bp. The sites demonstrate exploitation of coastal marine and lowland tropical forest resources. They extend Pleistocene occupation into island Melanesia and demonstrate that the large islands of northern Melanesia have an antiquity of human occupation of the same order as the adjacent Greater Australian continent.