Dating a pacific islander

We know tribes and bands predate chiefdoms and states. The idea of chiefs, someone in charge, is not a new thing, but it's an extremely important precursor. These islanders invented a new kind of society - that is a socially creative achievement. "It has its roots in a pre-modern era like Nan Madol where you have a king or chief. "The kind of society that we live in today, it wasn't born last year, or even 100 years ago," McCoy said. The discovery enables archaeologists to study more precisely how societies transform to more and more complex and hierarchical systems, said McCoy, an expert in landscape archaeology and monumental architecture and ideology in the Pacific Islands.

McCoy deployed uranium series dating to determine that when the tomb was built it was one-of-a-kind, making it the first monumental scaled burial site on the remote islands of the Pacific. McCoy, Southern Methodist University, Dallas. The discovery makes Nan Madol a key locale for studying how ancient human societies evolved from simple societies to more complex societies, said archaeologist Mark D.