On Sun, 5 Nov 2000 00:27:57 -0600, Mark wrote:
>NG is not a few boatloads of people a la New Zealand, but rather multiple boadloads
>over a broad period of time. Oz just might be the frog on a log thrown up on the
>beach just once, a la the Galapagos.
I made the remark about the *same* few boatloads because NG and
Australia were until recently connected: the same people who settled
Australia some 50,000 years ago were also the ones that settled New
Guinea.
It is possible, of course, that NG received more boatloads over the
years, even before the established fact of the Austronesians, but that
is hard to prove. The same might also be true for Australia (the
introduction of the dingo etc. may have been due to new populations
that linguistically replaced the original Australian lgs., except in
Tasmania?).
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...