News: Researchers claim 3,000-year-old human settlement found in Fiji

Posted: Thursday, July 14th, 2005 5:48 AM HST

Researchers claim 3,000-year-old human settlement found in Fiji

By Associated Press

SUVA, Fiji (AP) _ Archaeologists think they have unearthed the first human settlement on the South Pacific island of Fiji. The find is believed to be about three-thousand years old.

Archaeologists found 16 human skeletons at a burial site at Bourewa, on the southwest of the main island of Viti Levu.

Patrick Nunn is a professor of geography at the University of the South Pacific.

He says abundant evidence at the site suggests Bourewa was the first human settlement on the 340-island archipelago.

Nunn says pottery deliberately buried with or underneath human remains was of the so-called Lapita style and dated from around 1050 B-C.

(Copyright 2005 by the Associated Press. All rights reserved.)