Humankind's settlement of the remote Pacific Islands has often been seen by experts as a byproduct of the Neolithic Revolution in Asia based on early rice cultivation, but rice was not used in the islands until the early 1500s. John Terrell and his research colleagues are discovering that by 6,000 years ago, coastal lagoons behind the beaches on New Guinea's northern shoreline supported human poplation growth fueled mostly, if not entirely, by wild foods (fish, shellfish, nuts, and sago palms). They suspect that culture change in the Pacific after the Ice Age was founded on a wide spectrum of subsistence resources -- some wild and some carefully managed -- and not just on a handful of species imported from Asia.

John Terrell was born in Washington D.C., and studied at Harvard College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Auckland and Harvard University.