According to a paleo-geneticist at the Max Planck Institute in Austria, Vanuatu was first settled by the Austronesian Lapita people around 3000 years ago.
These were peoples who had largely East Asian genetic ancestry. But new genetic research revealed how "Austronesian languages were retained throughout its history despite near-total replacement of early Austronesian-Lapita with Papuan ancestry".
But Cosimo Posth said Papuan people soon started arriving from the Bismarck Archipelago, currently part of Papua New Guinea.
