HENRY - The human evolution news relay

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National Geographic has a fantastic special edition on the Lapita culture and the settlement of Polynesia:

Much of the thrill of venturing to the far side of the world rests on the romance of difference. So one feels a certain sympathy for Captain James Cook on the day in 1778 that he “discovered” Hawaii. Then on his third expedition to the Pacific, the British navigator had explored scores of islands across the breadth of the sea, from lush New Zealand to the lonely wastes of Easter Island. This latest voyage had taken him thousands of miles north from the Society Islands to an archipelago so remote that even the old Polynesians back on Tahiti knew nothing about it.

Imagine Cook’s surprise, then, when the natives of Hawaii came paddling out in their canoes and greeted him in a familiar tongue, one he had heard on virtually every mote of inhabited land he had visited. Marveling at the ubiquity of this Pacific language and culture, he later wondered in his journal: “How shall we account for this Nation spreading it self so far over this Vast ocean?”

Continued at: How ancient voyagers settled the far-flung islands of the Pacific. Don’t miss the videos of Jared Diamond and Pat Kirch either.

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There’s a rather fascinating article in Marie Clare (!?) about Kayan refugees in Thailand being forced to show off their native dress in a “human zoo”:

Zember, a quick-witted young woman with a cheerful, oval face, doesn’t want to be a human exhibit. Ever since she was 5, she has worn brass rings around her neck and smiled at foreigners who tromp through her rural village in Thailand. For tourists, it seems like the adventure of a lifetime — riding in a jeep through the snake-infested jungle to see the exotic “long-neck women” of the Kayan tribe. But now Zember has removed her coil — in protest of her captivity. She no longer wants to keep Thailand’s shameful secret: that the long-neck women are Burmese refugees who are being prevented by Thai authorities from taking up asylum overseas. As a lucrative tourist attraction, the women are forced to live in a virtual human zoo.

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