Hi everybody, from Wundery, welcome to another episode of Tides of History, I'm Patrick

Weimann, thanks for joining me.

Of all the topics I've covered on this long journey through prehistory, the Austronesians

and the Neolithic migrations into islands Southeast Asia and Oceania might be the one I find

the most compelling.

Relative to their importance in shaping the subsequent millennia of history, hundreds

of millions of people speak an Austronesian language today, these migrations and developments

have received very little attention.

But thanks to a huge variety of different kinds of evidence ranging from pottery to ancient

DNA to the Austronesian languages themselves, we can understand what happened in islands

Southeast Asia and Oceania 4,000 years ago in striking detail.

Thanks to this variety of evidence, more of which is being uncovered all the time, are

understanding of these past processes is changing rapidly.

His guest works right on the cutting edge of all these topics.

Mike Carson is an associate professor of archaeology at the University of Guam and he is one of

the world's leading experts on the archaeology of Oceania, Austronesian migrations, the prehistory

of the Mariana Islands and the study of archaeological landscapes.

He's the author most recently of archaeology of Pacific Oceania, inhabiting a sea of islands

and is collaborated on a truly staggering number of scholarly articles on everything

from pottery and radio carbon dating to ancient DNA and lost landscapes.

That's a carcin' thank you so much for joining me.

Patrick, thank you for inviting me on the program.

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