How people migrated to the Pacific islands
The many tiny islands of the Pacific Oceanhad no human population until ancestors of today’s islanders sailed fromSoutheast Asia in ocean-going canoes approximately 2,000 years ago. At thepresent time, the debate continues about exactly how they migrated such vastdistances across the ocean, without any of the modern technologies we take forgranted.
Although the romantic vision of some earlytwentieth-century writers of fleets of heroic navigators simultaneously settingsail had come to be considered by later investigators to be exaggerated, noconsidered assessment of Pacific voyaging was forthcoming until 1956 when theAmerican historian Andrew Sharp published his research. Sharp challenged the‘heroic vision’ by asserting that the expertise of the navigators was limited,and that the settlement of the islands was not systematic, being more dependenton good fortune by drifting canoes. Sharp’s theory was widely challenged, anddeservedly so. If nothing else, however, it did spark renewed interest in thetopic and precipitated valuable new research.
Since the 1960s a wealth of investigationshas been conducted, and most of them, thankfully, have been of the‘non-armchair’ variety. While it would be wrong to denigrate all ‘armchair’research - that based on an examination of available published materials - ithas turned out that so little progress had been made in the area of Pacificvoyaging because most writers relied on the same old sources - travellers’journals or missionary narratives compiled by unskilled observers. After Sharp,this began to change, and researchers conducted most of their investigationsnot in libraries, but in the field.
In 1965, David Lewis, a physician andexperienced yachtsman, set to work using his own unique philosophy: he took theyacht he had owned for many years and navigated through the islands in order tocontact those men who still find their way at sea using traditional methods. Hethen accompanied these men, in their traditional canoes, on test voyages fromwhich all modern instruments were banished from sight, though Lewis secretlyused them to confirm the navigator’s calculations. His most famous such voyagewas a return trip of around 1,000 nautical miles between two islands inmid•ocean. Far from drifting, as proposed by Sharp, Lewis found that ancientnavigators would have known which course to steer by memorizing which starsrose and set in certain positions along the horizon and this gave them fixeddirections by which to steer their boats.
The geographer Edwin Doran followed a quitedifferent approach. He was interested in obtaining exact data on canoe sailingperformance, and to that end employed the latest electronic instrumentation.Doran travelled on board traditional sailing canoes in some of the most remoteparts of the Pacific, all the while using his instruments to record canoespeeds in different wind strengths - from gales to calms - the angle canoescould sail relative to the wind. In the process, he provided the first reallyprecise attributes of traditional sailing canoes.
A further contribution was made by StevenHorvath. As a physiologist, Horvath’s interest was not in navigation techniquesor in canoes, but in the physical capabilities of the men themselves. Byadapting standard physiological techniques, Horvath was able to calculate theenergy expenditure required to paddle canoes of this sort at times when therewas no wind to fill the sails, or when the wind was contrary. He concluded thatpaddles, or perhaps long oars, could indeed have propelled for long distanceswhat were primarily sailing vessels.
Finally, a team led by p Wall Garrardconducted important research, in this case by making investigations whileremaining safely in the laboratory. Wall Garrard’s unusual method was to usethe findings of linguists who had studied the languages of the Pacific islands,many of which are remarkably similar although the islands where they are spokenare sometimes thousands of kilometres apart. Clever adaptation of computersimulation techniques pioneered in other disciplines allowed him to produceconvincing models suggesting the migrations were indeed systematic, but notsimultaneous. Wall Garrard proposed the migrations should be seen not as asingle journey made by a massed fleet of canoes, but as a series of ever moreambitious voyages, each pushing further into the unknown ocean.
What do we learn about Pacific navigationand voyaging from this research? Quite correctly, none of the researchers triedto use their findings to prove one theory or another; experiments such as thesecannot categorically confirm or negate a hypothesis. The strength of thisresearch lay in the range of methodologies employed. When we splice togetherthese findings we can propose that traditional navigators used a variety ofcanoe types, sources of water and navigation techniques, and it was this adaptabilitywhich was their greatest accomplishment. These navigators observed theconditions prevailing at sea at the time a voyage was made and altered theirtechniques accordingly. Furthermore, the canoes of the navigators were notdrifting helplessly at sea but were most likely part of a systematic migration;as such, the Pacific peoples were able to view the ocean as an avenue, not abarrier, to communication before any other race on Earth. Finally, oneunexpected but most welcome consequence of this research has been a renaissancein the practice of traditional voyaging. In some groups of islands in thePacific today young people are resurrecting the skills of their ancestors, whena few decades ago it seemed they would be lost forever.
Question 27-31
Do the following statements agree with theclaims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 27-31 on youranswer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with theclaims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts theclaims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if is impossible to say whatthe writer thinks about this
27 .......................The Pacificislands were uninhabited when migrants arrived by sea from Southeast Asia
28 .......................Andrew Sharpwas the first person to write about the migrants to islanders
29 .......................Andrew Sharpbelieved migratory voyages were based on more on luck than skill
30 .......................Despite beingcontroversial, Andrew Sharp’s research had positive results
31 .......................Edwin Dorandisagreed with the findings of Lewis’s research
Questions 32-36
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 32-36 onyour answer sheet.
32 David Lewis’s research was differentbecause
A he observed traditional navigators at work
B he conducted test voyages using his ownyacht
C he carried no modern instruments on testvoyages
D he spoke the same language as theislanders he sailed with
33 What did David Lewis’s researchdiscover about traditional navigators?
A They used the sun and moon to find theirposition
B They could not sail further than about1,000 nautical miles
C They knew which direction they weresailing in
D They were able to drift for long distances
34 What are we told about Edwin Doran’sresearch?
A Data were collected after the canoes hadreturned to land
B Canoe characteristics were recorded usingmodern instruments
C Research was conducted in the most denselypopulated regions
D Navigators were not allowed to see theinstruments Doran used
35 Which of the following did StevenHorvath discover during his research?
A Canoe design was less important than humanstrength
B New research methods had to be developedfor use in canoes
C Navigators became very tired on thelongest voyages
D Human energy may have been used to assistsailing canoes
36 What is the writer’s opinion of pWall Garrard’s research?
A He is disappointed it was conducted in thelaboratory
B He is impressed by the originality of thetechniques used
C He is surprised it was used to helplinguists with their research
D He is concerned that the islands studiedare long distances apart
Questions 37-40
Complete each sentence with the correctending, A-F, below. Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 37-40 onyour answer sheet.
37 .......................Onelimitation in the information produced by all of this research is that it
38 .......................The bestthing about this type of research
39 .......................The mostimportant achievement of traditional navigators
40 .......................The migrationof people from Asia to the Pacific
A was the variety of experimental techniquesused
B was not of interest to young islanderstoday
C was not conclusive evidence in support ofa single theory
D was being able to change their practiceswhen necessary
E was the first time humans intentionallycrossed an ocean
F was the speed with which it was conducted
Answer keys
27. YES
28. NO
29. YES
30. YES
31. NOT GIVEN
32. A
33. C
34. B
35. D
36. B
37. C
38. A
39. D
40. E
Archaeology ispartly the discovery of the treasures of the past, partly the careful work ofthe scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creativeimagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in theMiddle-East, it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and it isinvestigating the sewers of Roman Britain. But it is also the painstaking taskof interpretation, so that we come to understand what these things meanfor the human story. And it is the conservation of the world'scultural heritage against looting and careless harm.
Archaeology,then, is both a physical activity out in the field, and an intellectualpur-suit in the study or laboratory. That is part of its greatattraction. The rich mixture of dan-ger and detective work has also madeit the perfect vehicle for fiction writers and film-makers, from AgathaChristie with Murder in Mesopotamia to Stephen Spielberg with IndianaJones. However far from reality such portrayals are, they capture theessential truth that archaeology is an exciting quest —the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our past.
But howdoes archaeology relate to disciplines such as anthropology andhistory, that are also concerned with the human story? Is archaeology itselfa science? And what are the responsibilities of the archaeologist intoday's world?
Anthropology,at its broadest, is the study of humanity — our physical characteristic asanimals and our unique non-biological characteristics that we callculture. Culture in this sense includes what the anthropologist,Edward Tylor, summarized in 1871 as‘knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom andany other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member ofsociety’. Anthropologists also use the term ‘culture’ in a morere-stricted sense when they refer to the ‘culture’ of a particular society,meaning the non-biological characteristics unique to that society, whichdistinguish it from other societies.Anthropology is thus a broaddiscipline — so broad that it is generally broken down into three smallerdisciplines: physical anthropology, cultural anthropology and archaeology.
Physical anthropology,or biological anthropology as it is also called, concerns thestudy of human biological or physical characteristics and how theyevolved. Cultural anthropology — or social anthropology —analyses human culture and society. Two of its branches are ethnography (thestudy at first hand of individual living cultures) and ethnology (whichsets out to compare cultures using ethnographic evidence to derive generalprinciples about human society).
Archaeology isthe ‘past tense of culture anthropology’. Whereas culturalanthropolo-gists will often base their conclusions on the experience of livingwithin contemporary communities, archaeologists study past societiesprimarily through their material remains— the buildings, tools and otherartefacts that constitutes what is known as the material culture left over fromformer societies.
Nevertheless,one of the most important tasks for the archaeologist today is to know how tointerpret material culture in human terms. How were those pots used? Whyare some dwellings round and others square? Here the methods of archaeology andethno-graphy overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have developed ‘ethnography’,where,like ethnographers, they live among contemporary communities,but with the specific purpose of learning how such societies use materialculture — how they make their tools and weapons, why they build theirsettlements where they do, and so on. Moreover,archaeology has anactive role to play in the field of conservation. Heritage studiescon-stitutes a developing field, where it is realized that the world’scultural heritage is a diminishing resource which holds differentmeanings for different people.
If,then archaeology deals with the past, in what way does it differ fromhistory? In the broadest sense, just as archaeology is an aspectof anthropology, so too is it a part of history — where we mean the wholehistory of humankind from its beginnings over three million yearsago. Indeed, for more than ninety-nine percent of that huge span oftime, archaeology — the study of past material culture — is the onlysignificant source of information. Conventional historical sourcesbegin only with the introduction of writt-en records around 3000 BC in westernAsia, and much later in most other parts of the world.
A commonlydrawn distinction is between pre-history, i.e. the period before writtenrecords — and history in the narrow sense, meaning the study of the past usingwritten evidence. To archaeology, which studies all cultures andperiods, whether with or without writing, the distinction between history andpre-history is a convenient dividing line that recognizes the importance of thewritten word, but in no way lessens the importance of the useful informationcontained in oral histories.
Sincethe aim of archaeology is the understanding of humankind, it is ahumanistic study, and since it deals with the human past, it is a historicaldiscipline. But it differs from the study of written history in afundamental way. The material the archaeologist finds does not tell usdirectly what to think. Historical records make statements, offer opinionsand pass judgments. The objects the archaeologists discover, on the otherhand,tell us nothing directly in themselves. In this respect, the practiceof the archaeologist is rather like that of the scientist, who collects data,conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis, tests the hypothesis againstmore data, and then, in conclusion, devises a model that seems best tosummarize the pattern observed in the data. The archaeologist has todevelop a picture of the past, just as the scientist has to develop a coherent viewof the natural world.
Question14-19
Do thefollowing statements agree with the claims of the writer in ReadingPassage 2?
In boxes14—19 on your answer sheet write
TRUE ifthe statement agrees with the claims of the writer
FALSE ifthe statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOTGIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
14.Archaeologyinvolves creativity as well as careful investigative work. TRUE
15.Archaeologistsmust be able to translate texts from ancient languages. NOT GIVEN
16.Moviesgive a realistic picture of the work of archaeologists. FALSE
17.Anthropologistsdefine culture in more than one way. TRUE
18.Archaeologyis a more demanding field of study than anthropology. NOT GIVEN
19.Thehistory of Europe has been documented since 3,000 BC. FALSE
Question20-21
Choose TWO letters A—E.
Write your answers in boxes 20 and 21 on your answer sheet.
The list below gives some statements about anthropology.
Which TWO statementsare mentioned by the writer of the text?
D. It issubdivided for study purposes
E. Itstudies human evolutionary patterns
Question22-23
Write your answers in boxes 22 and 23 on your answer sheet.
The list below gives some of the tasks of an archaeologist.
Which TWO ofthese tasks are mentioned by the writer of the text?
C.deducing reasons for the shape of domestic buildings
D.investigating the way different cultures make and use objects.
Question24-27
Completethe summary of the last two paragraphs of Reading Passage 2.
ChooseNO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Writeyour answers in boxes 24—27 on your answer sheet.
Much ofthe work of archaeologists can be done using written records but they find
24. equally valuable. The writer describes archaeology as both a 25. and a 26. However, as archaeologists do not try to influence human behavior, the writer compares their style of working to that of a 27.
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