A Tongan Village
Photo: State Library of New South Wales
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Guns, Germs and Steel, Professor Jared Diamond, makes the point that it was not just superior technology (guns and steel) that enabled European imperialists to colonise much of the undeveloped world, but also our armoury of lethal germs that we unwittingly took with us.
Our germs, many of which are derived from related varieties in our domestic cattle, had being living with us for thousands of years in Europe where the population had developed a degree of natural resistance. However, when we came into contact with people who had lived, for example, on remote Pacific Islands, these people had little or no natural immunity, so diseases like measles and mumps were lethal and spread quickly, going ahead of us like a fifth column, working in secret to kill or severely weaken the indigenous population, making it easy to take control through force of arms.
This is an example of a sudden environmental change giving a big advantage to one group and being severely detrimental to a rival group. In evolutionary terms, this could be one reason why we have failed to develop complete resistance to our commensal and sometime pathogenic microbes and viruses; as we evolved, it was advantageous to us to have this invisible 'fifth column' to help us take over new territory. It's a classic example of how genes can form alliances and don't even need to belong to the same species, just so long as both benefit from the alliance.
Now two researchers from the Australian National University (ANU) School of Culture, History & Language, PhD candidate Phillip Parton and Professor Geoffrey Clark, have shown that this devastation of the population on Pacific islands was even worse than previously thought, with the population of the island of Tongatapu in the kingdom of Tonga being reduced to just 10,000 in 50 years, from 50-60,000 when Europeans first landed.
Their work, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, indicates population declines were a lot larger than previously thought.
As the ANU news release explains:
Sadly, the research paper in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports is behind a paywall, however the highlights and abstract can be read here. In then the authors say:I and my co-author used aerial laser scanning data to map residences on the main island of Tonga and then used archaeological data I collected as part of my PhD to estimate the population
This improved understanding of the past has allowed us to show a significant population decline from 50,000-60,000 to 10,000 during a 50-year period on the main island of Tongatapu in the Kingdom of Tonga.
Because this number is so much larger than anything anyone had previously considered, I used shipping and missionary data to check my estimates and found they were plausible. “Obviously, this shows a big reassessment of the impact of globalisation in the 19th century.
As in many parts of the world, the population of Pacific islands suffered severe declines after contact when Europeans introduced new pathogens.
Phillip Parton, lead author
Archaeology and Natural History
School of Culture, History, and Language
College of Asia and the Pacific
The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, AustraliaNew data reveals severe impact of European contact with Pacific islands
Pacific island nations suffered severe depopulation from introduced diseases as a consequence of contact with European vessels, according to a new study from The Australian National University (ANU) shows.
The research, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, indicates population declines were a lot larger than previously thought.
According to the study, the main island of Tonga had a population decline of between 70 and 86 per cent once Europeans made contact.
Researchers from the ANU School of Culture, History & Language, PhD candidate Phillip Parton and ARC Future Fellow Professor Geoffrey Clark, found there were between 100,000-120,000 people in Tonga prior to European contact.
HighlightsThere is, of course, no rational alternative to the view that this was an example of the cold, uncaring process of evolution by natural selection. Unless one subscribes to the view that this it was the work of a magic creative deity, who, for some reason, decided to kill off tens of thousands of Pacific islanders, and similar numbers of indigenous Americans, both North and South, and allow another culture to take over their land and treat them as subject people. And all by neglecting to give them the same level of protection against lethal bacteria and viruses that it gave to Europeans. Of course, white supremacist Christian fundamentalists will have no difficulty believing the latter.
- Pacific Islands suffered severe depopulation on contact with European vessels.
- Lidar derived settlement data reveals substantial pre european Tongan population.
- Validation on historical records indicate population decline of 70% to 86%
- Highlights contribution of lidar derived settlement data to understanding the past.
Abstract
The islands of Polynesia are often seen as “natural laboratories” where population size and growth are core components of models which examine the development of Oceanic societies. As in many parts of the world, the population of Pacific Islands suffered severe declines after contact when Europeans introduced new pathogens. These rapid population declines and a historical record weighted heavily to later missionary accounts complicate estimates of population size and distribution. Here, we use lidar derived settlement data to estimate the population of the island of Tongatapu, the seat of power of the Tu‘i Tonga polity between the 13th and 19th centuries. We use a Bayesian approach to adapt the house count method and estimate population based on information from: the number and spatial distribution of households from lidar survey, archaeological transect data to determine structure function, and ethnographic records of household composition. Results indicate the population of Tongatapu was probably between 50,000 and 60,000 people, suggesting a total population living in the archipelago of between 100,000 to 120,000 people. Population estimates were compared to population retrodictions calculated with previously unanalysed historical sources to show the Tongan archipelago suffered a population decline at all island groups of approximately 70% to 86%. These results highlight the contribution lidar derived settlement data to our understanding of demography and social development.
Parton, Phillip; Clark, Geoffrey
Using lidar and Bayesian inference to reconstruct archaeological populations in the Kingdom of Tonga
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 45; 103610; DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2022.103610
© 2022 Science Direct ( Elsevier B.V.)
Reprinted under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, s60.
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