The colonisation of eastern parts of the Pacific Islands was the last phase in the preindustrial expansion of the human species. Given the scale and challenges of the endeavour it is unsurprising that scholars have long been interested in understanding the conditions that drove and supported the exploration and settlement of this vast region. There has been speculation as to the influence of demographic factors, either as drivers or in some way regulating the rate and success of human expansion, but testing this has proven challenging. This study evaluates two hypotheses of population dynamics: the adaptation/resilience hypothesis, which proposes that populations respond to localised environmental conditions and changes in subsistence strategy, technology, differences in pathogen loads, and other events that occur at different times in different places; and the temporal hypothesis, which proposes that populations respond to major events such as climate change that occur in a region at an absolute point in, or over an absolute period of, time (noting that the two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive). Applying new methods for estimating the rate of natural population increase from human skeletal remains, this study utilised 23 samples to evaluate trends in population increase following the human expansion into the region. The results indicate a trend in population growth following colonisation, with initially high population growth, followed by a significant decrease and subsequently an increase in growth rates. The lack of a temporal trend may represent a high degree of heterogeneity in the impacts of climate change on individual archipelagos and islands.

太平洋岛屿东部地区的殖民化是人类前工业化扩张的最后阶段。考虑到这一努力的规模和挑战，学者们长期以来一直对了解推动和支持这一广阔地区的探索和定居的条件感兴趣也就不足为奇了。人们一直猜测人口因素的影响，要么作为驱动因素，要么以某种方式调节人类扩张的速度和成功，但事实证明测试这一点具有挑战性。本研究评估了种群动态的两个假设：适应/复原力假设，该假设提出种群对局部环境条件以及生存策略、技术、病原体负荷差异以及不同地点不同时间发生的其他事件的变化做出反应；时间假设，它提出人口会对某个地区在绝对时间点或绝对时间段内发生的气候变化等重大事件做出反应（请注意，这两个假设并不相互排斥）。这项研究采用新方法来估计人类骨骼遗骸的自然人口增长率，利用 23 个样本来评估人类扩张到该地区后的人口增长趋势。结果表明殖民后人口增长的趋势，最初人口增长较高，随后显着下降，随后增长率上升。缺乏时间趋势可能代表气候变化对各个群岛和岛屿的影响存在高度异质性。