In terms of glottochronological data, this was the pinnacle of classical data that was established on Polynesian migration. Classical lexicostatistics is too inaccurate to provide better estimates on arrival dates, only the order of events. However the Polynesian question, such as their ultimate place of origin was still left unanswered. New methods would be needed to see where and when the migration began.
Genetic linguistic research methods
Biologists have leaned into the similarities between linguistics and genetics, even Darwin commented on the similarity between the two fields \cite{Darwin_1872}. Biologically the tree model implied by the comparative method can be approached by maximum parsimony and Bayesian methods. Maximum parsimony is the method of resolving a phylogeny by selecting the tree requiring the fewest number of evolutionary events/changes, and these methods are useful for simplistic methodology such as \cite{Gray2000}, but struggle to cope with the large number of variables complex linguistic questions require, and so complicated lexicogeographic problems are being solved with Bayesian methods.
Bayesian Phylogenetics
Modern day linguistical phylogenetic methods are usually based on Bayesian Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) methods, the full depth of these methods is beyond the scope of this paper, but we can establish the foundations of the method, and how it can be applied to phylogenetics.
To explain it we will start with Bayes' theorem: