| Abstract: |
Reference to our original paper (Hung et al. 2011) will show that we did not suggest that the Marianas were settled directly from the Cagayan Valley, nor did we insist on the northern Philippines as the only possible source for the Chamorro.We hold to our conclusion: While the first explorers to discover the Mariana Islands may have possessed many cultural traits and skills shared commonly throughout a broad region, the subsequent successful colonisation indicates strong similarities of pottery type and language with the northern Philippines (Hung et al. 2011: 923). Nowhere in eastern Indonesia, Palau, Yap or New Guinea has pottery so far been found which could be considered ancestral to the early Marianas pottery, or even to Lapita.Winter et al. refer toMorotai, an island north of Halmahera, as a possible way-station. But Morotai has a Papuan-speaking (non-Austronesian) population that so far lacks any record of pottery older than about 2000 BP (Bellwood et al. 1998).
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