Beyond the Blue Horizon IELTS Reading Passage
Beyond the Blue Horizon
Paragraph A
Ancient voyagers who established the far-flung islands of the Pacific Ocean An archaeological opportunity has relocated in an area of Efate, part of the Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, where evidence has been found of an ancient, seafaring people who are the long-forgotten ancestors of modern Polynesians. The archaeology site was tilted open by accident. An agricultural labourer, digging sporadically in the grounds of an abandoned plantation, which was a grave; indeed the first of numerous graves in a 3,000-year-old cemetery. It is the oldest cemetery in the Pacific islands, which contains the ancient peoples known as the Lapita; the first ancient peoples to settle the Pacific islands.
Paragraph B
These were daring, blue-water voyagers who sailed across the ocean with mere canoes. They were more than explorers, however. They were also pioneers, and they brought everything they needed to build a new life, and that included livestock; a taro cutting; and stone tools. In a few centuries, the Lapita dramatically extended their world, traveling from the jungle-covered volcanoes of Papua New Guinea to the most isolated coral outliers of Tonga.
Paragraph C
The Lapita left precious few clues about themselves, but Efate expands the volume of data available to researchers dramatically. The remains of 62 individuals have been uncovered so far, and archaeologists were also thrilled to find six complete Lapita pots. Other items included a Lapita burial urn with modeled birds arranged on the rim as though peering down at the human remains sealed inside. ‘It’s an important discovery,’ says Matthew Spriggs, professor of archaeology at the Australian National University and head of the international team digging up the site, ‘for it conclusively identifies the remains as Lapita.
Paragraph D
’DNA teased from these human remains may help answer one of the most puzzling questions in Pacific anthropology: did all Pacific islanders spring from one source or many? Was there only one outward migration from a single point in Asia, or several from different points? ‘This represents the best opportunity we’ve had yet, says Spriggs, to find out who the Lapita actually were, where they came from, and who their closest descendants are today.’
Paragraph E
There is one stubborn question for which archaeology has yet to provide any answers: how did the Lapita accomplish the ancient equivalent of a moon landing, many times over? No-one has found one of their canoes or any rigging, which could reveal how the canoes were sailed. Nor do the oral histories and traditions of later Polynesians offer any insights, for they turn into myths long before they reach as far back in time as the Lapita.
Paragraph F
All we can say for certain is that the Lapita had canoes that were capable of ocean voyages, and they had the ability to sail them, says Geoff Irwin, a professor of archaeology at the University of Auckland. Those sailing skills, he says, were developed and passed down over thousands of years by earlier mariners who worked their way through the archipelagoes of the western Pacific, making short crossings to nearby islands. The real adventure didn’t begin, however, until their Lapita descendants sailed out of sight of land, with empty horizons on every side. This must have been as difficult for them as landing on the moon is for us today. Certainly it distinguished them from their ancestors, but what gave them the courage to launch out on such risky voyages?
Paragraph G
According to Irwin the Lapitas sailed east into the Pacific ocean, against the prevailing trade winds. It is the author’s argument that those unpleasant headwinds may have made all the difference. ‘They could sail out for days into the unknown circumstance and survey a new area, knowing that if the area was unproductive, they could simply turn back and catch a fast ride back on the trade winds. That's what would have made it all happen. When out there, shipwrights would have noticed abundant clues to land: seabirds, coconuts and sticks which are tossed to sea by tides, and, the afternoon buildup of clouds on the horizon, which often signifies an island in the distance..
Paragraph H
For returning explorers, successful or not, the geography of their own archipelagoes would have provided a safety net. Without this to go by, overshooting their home ports, getting lost and sailing off into eternity would have been all too easy. Vanuatu, for example, stretches more than 500 miles in a northwest-southeast trend, its scores of intervisible islands forming a backstop for mariners riding the trade winds home.
Paragraph I
All this presupposes one essential detail, says Atholl Anderson, professor of prehistory at the Australian National University: the Lapita had mastered the advanced art of sailing against the wind. ‘And there’s no proof they could do any such thing,’ Anderson says. There has been this assumption they made, and people have built canoes to re-create those early voyages based on that assumption. But nobody has any idea what their canoes looked like or how they were rigged.
Paragraph J
Rather than give all the credit to human skill, Anderson invokes the winds of chance. El Nino, the same climate disruption that affects the Pacific today, may have helped scatter the Lapita, Anderson suggests. He points out that climate data obtained from slow-growing corals around the Pacific indicate a series of unusually frequent El Ninos around the time of the Lapita expansion. By reversing the regular east-to-west flow of the trade winds for weeks at a time, these super El Ninos might have taken the Lapita on long unplanned voyages.
Paragraph K
However they did it, the Lapita spread themselves a third of the way across the Pacific, then called it quits for reasons known only to them. Ahead lay the vast emptiness of the central Pacific and perhaps they were too thinly stretched to venture farther. They probably never numbered more than a few thousand in total, and in their rapid migration eastward they encountered hundreds of islands, more than 300 in Fiji alone.
For an additional source of strategies to improve and support your desired score, see: Strategies to Obtain High Scores on the IELTS Reading Test.
