[AlotOfReading]

Not to dismiss your experiences with academic anthropology, but this paper isn't actually about any transoceanic seafaring cultures. It's about the population structure of some of the first peoples of the Americas and their ancestors, which predate polynesians by something like ten to twenty thousand years. I made the same mistake on my initial reading too.

[tempforanthro]

No worries, though I did not mention Polynesians.

This is not the venue to parse out what Australasian means, but, at least genetically, we would be discussing a much older population.

It is by definition about seafaring people, however, as the only accepted migration path to the americas has been over the bering straights.

edit: oops. now i see where you are coming from. Mea culpa. see comment re Pleistocene boats. Apologies for my derp

[eridan2]

not necessarily seafaring people; the migration was over land, possible due to the lowering of sea level during the Last Glacial Maximum

[tempforanthro]

afaik, or can even imagine, there were no land routes across the Pacific at even glacial maximum.

If you know different, tell.