Polynesia
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Geographic definition of Polynesia
Polynesia (
UK: //;
US: //, from
Greek:
πολύς "poly"
many +
Greek:
νῆσος "nēsos"
island) is a
subregion of
Oceania, made up of over 1,000
islands scattered over the central and southern
Pacific Ocean. The indigenous people who inhabit the islands of Polynesia are termed
Polynesians and they share many similar traits including
language,
culture and beliefs.
[1] Historically, they were experienced sailors and used stars to navigate during the night.
The term "Polynesia" was first used in 1756 by French writer
Charles de Brosses, and originally applied to all the
islands of the Pacific. In 1831,
Jules Dumont d'Urville proposed a restriction on its use during a lecture to the Geographical Society of Paris.
Geography
Geology
Polynesia is characterized by a small amount of land spread over a very large portion of the mid and southern
Pacific Ocean. Most Polynesian islands and archipelagos, including the
Hawaiian Islands and
Samoa, are composed of volcanic islands built by
hotspots.
New Zealand,
Norfolk Island, and
Ouvéa, the Polynesian outlier near New Caledonia, are the unsubmerged portions of the largely sunken continent of
Zealandia.
Zealandia is believed to have mostly sunk by 23 m.y.a. and resurfaced
geologically recently due to a change in the movements of the
Pacific Plate in relation to the
Indo-Australian plate, which served to uplift the New Zealand portion. At first, the Pacific plate was subducted under the Australian plate. The
Alpine Fault that traverses the South Island is currently a
transform fault while the convergent plate boundary from the North Island northwards is a subduction zone called the
Kermadec-Tonga Subduction Zone. The volcanism associated with this
subduction zone is the origin of the
Kermadec and
Tongan island archipelagos.
Out of about 117,000 or 118,000 square miles of land, over 103,000 square miles are within
New Zealand;
the Hawaiian archipelago comprises about half the remainder. The
Zealandia continent has approximately 1.4 million square miles of
continental shelf. The oldest rocks in the region are found in New
Zealand and are believed to be about 510 million years old. The oldest
Polynesian rocks outside of Zealandia are to be found in the Hawaiian
Emperor Seamount Chain, and are 80 million years old.
Geographic area
Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the
Polynesian Triangle, although there are some islands that are inhabited by
Polynesian people situated outside the Polynesian Triangle.
Geographically, the Polynesian Triangle is drawn by connecting the points of
Hawaii,
New Zealand and
Easter Island. The other main island groups located within the Polynesian Triangle are
Samoa,
Tonga, the
Cook Islands,
Tuvalu,
Tokelau,
Niue,
Wallis and Futuna and
French Polynesia.
There are also small Polynesian settlements in
Papua New Guinea, the
Solomon Islands, the
Caroline Islands, and in
Vanuatu. An island group with strong Polynesian cultural traits outside of this great triangle is
Rotuma, situated north of
Fiji. The people of Rotuma have many common Polynesian traits but speak a non-
Polynesian language. Some of the
Lau Islands to the southeast of Fiji have strong historic and cultural links with Tonga.
However, in essence, Polynesia is a cultural term referring to one of the three parts of
Oceania (the others being
Micronesia and
Melanesia).
DNA studies suggest that the indigenous Pacific Islands population
migrated from Taiwan thousands of years ago and dispersed throughout the
region into three distinct cultural groups.
Island groups
The following are the islands and island groups, either nations or
overseas territories of former colonial powers, that are of native
Polynesian culture or where archaeological evidence indicates Polynesian
settlement in the past.
[2] Some islands of Polynesian origin are outside the general triangle that geographically defines the region.
Main Polynesia
The
Phoenix Islands and
Line Islands, most of which are part of
Kiribati, are geographically Polynesian islands, but they had no permanent settlements until European colonization.
Polynesian outliers
In Melanesia
In Micronesia
Subantarctic Islands
History of the Polynesian people
Mainstream theories
Austronesians expansion map (French)
The Polynesian people are considered by linguistic, archaeological and human genetic ancestry a subset of the sea-faring
Austronesian people and tracing
Polynesian languages places their
prehistoric origins in
Taiwan. Those people, the
natives,
are thought to have arrived through South China about 8000 years ago.
They were a different people and linguistically unrelated to the
Han Chinese who now form the majority of people in China and Taiwan. Taiwan, previously inhabited mostly by these non-Han aborigines, was
Sinicized via large-scale Han immigration accompanied with assimilation during the 17th century.
After about 2000 BC speakers of
Austronesian languages began spreading from Taiwan into
Island Southeast Asia,.
[7][8][9]
By about 1500 BC they found the western edges of
Micronesia were moving into
Melanesia through a route further south by way of the Birds Head of New Guinea.
There are three theories regarding the spread of humans across the Pacific to Polynesia. These are outlined well by Kayser
et al. (2000)
[10] and are as follows:
- Express Train model: A recent (c. 3000–1000 BC) expansion out of Taiwan, via the Philippines and eastern Indonesia and from the northwest ("Bird's Head") of New Guinea, on to Island Melanesia
by roughly 1400 BC, reaching western Polynesian islands right about 900
BC. This theory is supported by the majority of current genetic, linguistic, and archaeological data.
- Entangled Bank model: Emphasizes the long history of Austronesian
speakers' cultural and genetic interactions with indigenous Island
Southeast Asians and Melanesians along the way to becoming the first
Polynesians.
- Slow Boat model: Similar to the express-train model but with a
longer hiatus in Melanesia along with admixture, both genetically,
culturally and linguistically with the local population. This is
supported by the Y-chromosome data of Kayser et al. (2000), which shows that all three haplotypes of Polynesian Y chromosomes can be traced back to Melanesia.[11]
In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this
expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with
some certainty. It is thought that by roughly 1400 BC,
[12] "
Lapita Peoples", so-named after their pottery tradition, appeared in the
Bismarck Archipelago of northwest
Melanesia. This culture is seen as having adapted and evolved through time and space since its emergence "Out of
Taiwan".
They had given up rice production, for instance, after encountering and
adapting to breadfruit in the Bird's Head area of New Guinea. In the
end, the most eastern site for Lapita archaeological remains recovered
so far has been through work on the
archaeology in Samoa. The site is at
Mulifanua on
Upolu.
The Mulifanua site, where 4,288 pottery shards have been found and
studied, has a "true" age of c. 1000 BC based on C14 dating.
[13] A 2010 study places the beginning of the human archaeological sequences of Polynesia in
Tonga at 900 B.C.,
[14]
the small differences in dates with Samoa being due to differences in
radiocarbon dating technologies between 1989 and 2010, the Tongan site
apparently predating the Samoan site by some few decades in real time.
Within a mere three or four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita
archaeological culture spread 6,000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as
Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa which were first populated around 3,000 years ago as mentioned previously.
[15]
A cultural divide began to develop between Fiji to the west, and the
distinctive Polynesian language and culture emerging on Tonga and Samoa
to the east. Where there was once faint evidence of uniquely shared
developments in Fijian and Polynesian speech, most of this is now called
"borrowing" and is thought to have occurred in those and later years
more than as a result of continuing unity of their earliest dialects on
those far flung lands. Contacts were mediated especially through the
eastern
Lau Islands of Fiji and this is where most Fijian-Polynesian linguistic interaction occurred.
[citation needed]
Tiny populations seem to have been involved at first.
[14]
They were
matrilineal and
matrilocal
peoples upon arrival to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa and had been through at
least some goodly portion of their time in the Bismarck Archipelago. The
modern Polynesians, in their profound isolation from the world beyond,
still show the human genetic results of a culture, when their ancestors
were still in Melanesia, that allowed indigenous men, but not women, to
"marry in" – useful evidence for matrilocality.
[7][8][16][17]
Matrilocality and matrilineality went by-the-bye at some early time
but Polynesians and most other Austronesian speakers in the Pacific
Islands were/are still highly "matricentric" in their traditional
jurisprudence.
[16]
The Lapita pottery for which the general archaeological complex of the
earliest "Oceanic" Austronesian speakers in the Pacific Islands are
named also went by-the-bye in Western Polynesia and language, social
life and
material culture were very distinctly "Polynesian" by the time
Eastern Polynesia began to be settled after a "pause" of 1000 years or perhaps well more in Western Polynesia.
The dating of the settlement of Eastern Polynesia including
Hawai'i,
Easter Island, and
New Zealand is not agreed upon in every instance. Most recently a 2010 study using
meta-analysis of the most reliable
radiocarbon dates
available suggested that the colonization of Eastern Polynesia
(including Hawaii and New Zealand) proceeded in two short episodes: in
the
Society Islands from 1025–1120 AD and further afield from 1190–1290 AD,
[18] with Easter Island being settled around 1200.
[19][20]
Other archeological models developed in recent decades, which are
challenged by that recent set of radiocarbon dating interpretations,
have pointed to dates of between 300 and 500 AD, or alternatively 800 AD
(as supported by
Jared Diamond)
for the settlement of Easter Island, and similarly, a date of 500 AD
has been suggested for Hawaii. Linguistically, there is a very distinct
"East Polynesian" subgroup with many shared innovations not seen in
other Polynesian languages. The Marquesas dialects are perhaps the
source of the oldest Hawaiian speech which is overlaid by Tahitian
variety speech, as Hawaiian oral histories would suggest. The earliest
varieties of New Zealand Maori speech may have had multiple sources from
around central Eastern Polynesia as Maori oral histories would suggest.
[citation needed]
Political history of Polynesia
Perhaps the oldest extensive political entity was that of the Samoa-based
Tu'i Manu'a Confederacy,
ruled by the holders of the Tu'i Manu'a title, which may well be the
oldest chieftain title in Polynesia. This confederacy likely included
much of Western Polynesia and some outliers at the height of its power
in the 10th and 11th centuries; most notably: the
Samoa,
Tonga,
Lau Islands and perhaps the main islands of Fiji. The Tongans revolted around 1000 years ago and formed their own
Tu'i Tonga empire that came to dominate Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji, with an influence stretching from
Nauru in the Northwest, to
Niue in the East. The empire ruled for much of the
Medieval period, until the Samoan revolt and subsequent rise of the
Malietoa dynasties in Samoa, and ended with their capitulation to the Tongan
Tu'i Ha'atakalaua dynasty in the 15th century.
Tonga 1500s–present
After a bloody civil war, political power in Tonga eventually fell under the
Tu'i Kanokupolu dynasty in the 16th century.
In 1845 the ambitious young warrior, strategist, and orator
Tāufaʻāhau
united Tonga into more Western-style kingdom. He held the chiefly title
of Tuʻi Kanokupolu, but had been baptised with the name Jiaoji
("George") in 1831. In 1875, with the help of missionary
Shirley Waldemar Baker,
he declared Tonga a constitutional monarchy, formally adopted the
western royal style, emancipated the "serfs", enshrined a code of law,
land tenure, and freedom of the press, and limited the power of the
chiefs.
Tonga became a British-protected state under a Treaty of Friendship
on 18 May 1900, when European settlers and rival Tongan chiefs tried to
oust the second king. Within the British Empire, which posted no higher
permanent representative on Tonga than a British Consul (1901–1970),
Tonga formed part of the
British Western Pacific Territories
(under a colonial High Commissioner, residing on Fiji) from 1901 until
1952. Despite being under the protectorate, Tonga retained its monarchy
without interruption.
On June 4, 1970 the
Kingdom of Tonga received independence from the British protectorate.
Samoa Malietoa–present
Samoa remained under Malietoa chieftains until its East-West division by
Tripartite Convention (1899) subsequent annexation by the
German Empire
and the United States. The German-controlled Western portion of Samoa
(the consisting of the bulk of Samoan territory) was occupied by New
Zealand in WWI, and administered by it under a Class C
League of Nations Mandate
until receiving independence on January 1, 1962. The new Independent
State of Samoa was not a monarchy, though the Malietoa title-holder
remained very influential. It officially ended, however with the death
of Malietoa Tanumafili II on May 11, 2007.
Tahiti
Hawaii
New Zealand Maori
On October 28, 1835 members of the
Ngā Puhi and surrounding
iwi
issued a "declaration of independence", as a "confederation of tribes"
to resist potential French colonization efforts and to prevent the ships
and cargo of Maori merchants from being seized at foreign ports. They
received recognition from the British monarch in 1836. (See
United Tribes of New Zealand,
New Zealand Declaration of Independence,
James Busby.)
Using the
Treaty of Waitangi and
right of discovery as a basis, the
United Kingdom annexed New Zealand as a part of
New South Wales in 1840.
In response to the actions of the colonial government, Maori looked
to form monarchy inclusive of all Maori tribes in order to reduce
vulnerability to the British divide-and-conquer strategy.
Pōtatau Te Wherowhero high priest and chief of the
Ngāti Mahuta tribe of the
Waikato
iwi was crowned as the Maori king in 1858. The king's territory
consisted primarily of the lands in the center of the North Island, and
the iwi constituted from the most powerful non-signatories of the Treaty
of Waitangi, with Te Wherowhero also never having signed it.
[21] (See
Kingitanga.)
All tribes were incorporated into rule under the colonial government
by the late 19th century. Although Maori were given the privilege of
being legally enfranchised subjects of the British Empire under the
Treaty, Maori culture and language were actively suppressed by the
colonial government and by economic and social pressures from the
Pakeha society until efforts were made to preserve indigenous culture starting in the late 1950s and culminating in the
Waitangi Tribunal's
interpretation of language and culture being included in the treasures
set to be preserved under the Treaty of Waitangi. Moving from a low
point of 15,000 speakers in the 1970s, there are now over 157,000 people
who have some proficiency in the standard
Māori language according to the 2006 census
[22] in New Zealand, due in large part to government recognition and promotion of the language.
Maori are very much integrated into New Zealand society, and many are
of mixed Maori and European, Asian, or Pacific Islander heritage. The
New Zealand Defence forces are over half Maori, and the New Zealand
Special Forces are 2/3 Maori.
Jerry Mateparae, the former chief of the armed forces, now serves as
Governor-General of New Zealand. However, despite major achievements towards equality, Maori are still under-represented in many fields.
Fiji
The Lau islands had after the Tu'i Mana'u dynasty were subject to
periods of Tongan and then Fijian control until their eventual conquest
by Seru Epenisa Cakobau of the Kingdom of Fiji by 1871. In around 1855 a
Tongan prince,
Enele Ma'afu, proclaimed the Lau islands as his kingdom, and took the title
Tui Lau.
Fiji itself had been ruled by numerous divided chieftains until
Cakobau unified the landmass. The Lapita culture, the ancestors of the
Polynesians, existed in Fiji from 3500 BCE until they were displaced by
the Melanesians about a thousand years later. (Interestingly, Samoans
and subsequent Polynesian cultures adopted Melanesian face painting
methods.)
In 1873, Cakobau ceded a Fiji heavily indebted to foreign creditors
to the United Kingdom. It became independent on 10 October 1970 and a
republic on 28 September 1987.
Cook Islands
Tuvalu
Canoe carving on
Nanumea atoll, Tuvalu
The
reef islands and
atolls of
Tuvalu
are identified as being part of West Polynesia. The pattern of
settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians
spread out from the Samoan Islands into the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu
providing a stepping stone to migration into the
Polynesian Outlier communities in
Melanesia and
Micronesia.
[23][24][25]
The stories as to the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary from island to island. On
Niutao,
[26] Funafuti and
Vaitupu the founding ancestor is described as being from
Samoa;
[27][28] whereas on
Nanumea the founding ancestor is described as being from
Tonga.
[27] These stories can be linked to what is known about the Samoa-based
Tu'i Manu'a Confederacy,
ruled by the holders of the Tu'i Manu'a title, which confederacy likely
included much of Western Polynesia and some outliers at the height of
its power in the 10th and 11th centuries.
The extent of influence of the
Tuʻi Tonga
line of Tongan kings, which originated in the 10th century is
understood to have extended to some of the islands of Tuvalu in the
mid-13th century.
[28] However the existence of the
Tuʻi Tonga Empire is disputed.
The history of
Niutao
recalls that in the 15th century Tongan warriors were defeated in a
battle on the reef of Niutao, Tongan warriors also invaded Niutao later
in the 15th century and again were repelled. A third and fourth Tongan
invasion of Niutao occurred in the late 16th century, again with the
Tongans being defeated.
[26]
Fishing was the primary source of protein, with the
cuisine of Tuvalu
reflecting the food that could be grown on low-lying atolls. Navigation
between the islands of Tuvalu was carried out using outrigger canoes.
The population levels of the low-lying islands of Tuvalu had to be
managed because of the effects of periodic droughts and the risk of
severe famine if the gardens were poisoned by the salt from the
storm-surge of a
tropical cyclone.
Polynesian links to the Americas
The
sweet potato, called
kūmara in
Māori,
which is native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia when
Europeans first reached the Pacific. Remains of the plant have been
radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, and current thinking
is that it was brought to central Polynesia circa 700 AD and spread
across Polynesia from there, possibly by Polynesians who had traveled to
South America and back.
[29]
Thor Heyerdahl proposed in the mid-20th century that the Polynesians had migrated from South America on
balsa-log boats.
[30][31] Many anthropologists have criticised Heyerdahl's theory, including
Wade Davis in his book
The Wayfinders.
Davis says that Heyerdahl "ignored the overwhelming body of linguistic,
ethnographic, and ethnobotanical evidence, augmented today by genetic
and archaeological data, indicating that he was patently wrong."
[32]
Cultures of Polynesia
Polynesia divides into two distinct cultural groups, East Polynesia
and West Polynesia. The culture of West Polynesia is conditioned to high
populations. It has strong institutions of marriage and well-developed
judicial, monetary and trading traditions. It comprises the groups of
Tonga,
Niue,
Samoa
and extended to the atolls of Tuvalu to the north. The pattern of
settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians
spread out from the Samoan Islands into the Tuvaluan atolls, with
Tuvalu providing a stepping stone to migration into the
Polynesian Outlier communities in
Melanesia and
Micronesia.
[23][24][25]
Eastern Polynesian cultures are highly adapted to smaller islands and atolls, principally the
Cook Islands,
Tahiti, the
Tuamotus, the
Marquesas,
Hawaii,
Rapa Nui and smaller central-pacific groups. The large islands of
New Zealand were first settled by Eastern Polynesians who adapted their culture to a non-tropical environment.
Unlike in
Melanesia,
leaders were chosen in Polynesia based on their hereditary bloodline.
Samoa however, had another system of government that combines elements
of heredity and real-world skills to choose leaders. This system is
called
Fa'amatai.
[33]
According to Ben R. Finney and Eric M. Jones, "On Tahiti, for example,
the 35,000 Polynesians living there at the time of European discovery
were divided between high-status persons with full access to food and
other resources, and low-status persons with limited access."
[34]
Religion, farming, fishing, weather prediction, out-rigger canoe (similar to modern
catamarans) construction and
navigation
were highly developed skills because the population of an entire island
depended on them. Trading of both luxuries and mundane items was
important to all groups. Periodic droughts and subsequent famines often
led to war.
[34] Many low-lying islands could suffer severe famine if their gardens were poisoned by the salt from the storm-surge of a
tropical cyclone. In these cases fishing, the primary source of protein, would not ease loss of
food energy. Navigators, in particular, were highly respected and each island maintained a house of navigation with a canoe-building area.
Settlements by the Polynesians were of two categories: the hamlet and
the village. Size of the island inhabited determined whether or a not a
hamlet would be built. The larger
volcanic
islands usually had hamlets because of the many zones that could be
divided across the island. Food and resources were more plentiful and so
these settlements of four to five houses (usually with gardens) were
established so that there would be no overlap between the zones.
Villages, on the other hand, were built on the coasts of smaller islands
and consisted of thirty or more houses—in the case of atolls, on only
one of the group so that food cultivation was on the others. Usually
these villages were fortified with walls and palisades made of stone and
wood.
[35]
However, New Zealand demonstrates the opposite: large volcanic islands with fortified villages.
As well as being great navigators these people
were artists and artisans
of great skill. Simple objects, such as fish-hooks would be
manufactured to exacting standards for different catches and decorated
even when the decoration was not part of the function. Stone and wooden
weapons were considered to be more powerful the better they were made
and decorated. In some island groups weaving was a strong part of the
culture and gifting woven articles an ingrained practice. Dwellings were
imbued with character by the skill of their building. Body decoration
and jewellery is of international standard to this day.
The religious attributes of Polynesians were common over the whole
Pacific region. While there are some differences in their spoken
languages they largely have the same explanation for the creation of the
earth and sky, for the gods that rule aspects of life and for the
religious practices of everyday life.
People travelled thousands of
miles to celebrations that they all owned communally.
Beginning in the 1820s large numbers of missionaries worked in the
islands, converting many groups to Christianity. Polynesia, argues Ian
Breward, is now "one of the most strongly Christian regions in the
world....Christianity was rapidly and successfully incorporated into
Polynesian culture. War and slavery disappeared."
[36]
Polynesian languages
Polynesian languages are all members of the family of
Oceanic languages, a sub-branch of the
Austronesian language family. Polynesian languages show a considerable degree of similarity. The
vowels are generally the same—a, e, i, o, and u, pronounced as in
Italian,
Spanish, and
German—and the consonants are always followed by a vowel. The languages of various island groups show changes in
consonants.
R and
v are used in central and eastern Polynesia whereas
l and
v are used in western Polynesia. The
glottal stop is increasingly represented by an inverted comma or
'okina. In the
Society Islands, the original
Proto-Polynesian *
k and *
ng have merged as glottal stop; so the name for the ancestral homeland, deriving from Proto-Nuclear Polynesian
*sawaiki,
[37] becomes Havai'i. In New Zealand, where the original *
w is used instead of
v, the ancient home is
Hawaiki. In the Cook Islands, where the glottal stop replaces the original *
s (with a likely intermediate stage of *
h), it is ‘Avaiki. In the Hawaiian islands, where the glottal stop replaces the original
k, the largest island of the group is named Hawai‘i. In Samoa, where the original
s is used instead of
h,
v replaces
w, and the glottal stop replaces the original
k, the largest island is called
Savai'i.
[1]
Economy
With the exception of New Zealand, the majority of independent
Polynesian islands derive much of their income from foreign aid and
remittances from those who live in other countries. Some encourage their
young people to go where they can earn good money to remit to their
stay-at-home relatives. Many Polynesian locations, such as
Easter Island, supplement this with tourism income. Some have more unusual sources of income, such as
Tuvalu which marketed its '
.tv' internet top-level domain name or the Cooks that relied on
stamp sales.
Political union
After several years of discussing a potential regional grouping,
three sovereign states (Samoa, Tonga and Tuvalu) and five self-governing
but non-sovereign territories formally launched, in November 2011, the
Polynesian Leaders Group,
intended to cooperate on a variety of issues including culture and
language, education, responses to climate change, and trade and
investment. It does not, however, constitute a political or monetary
union.
[38][39][40]
Polynesian navigation
Polynesia comprised islands diffused throughout a triangular area
with sides of four thousand miles. The area from the Hawaiian Islands in
the north, to Easter Island in the east and to New Zealand in the south
were all settled by Polynesians.
Navigators traveled to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by
oral tradition
from navigator to apprentice. In order to locate directions at various
times of day and year, navigators in Eastern Polynesia memorized
important facts: the motion of specific
stars, and where they would rise on the
horizon of the ocean;
weather;
times of travel; wildlife species (which congregate at particular
positions); directions of swells on the ocean, and how the crew would
feel their motion; colors of the sea and sky, especially how clouds
would cluster at the locations of some islands; and angles for
approaching harbors.
Polynesian (Hawaiian) navigators sailing multi-hulled
canoe, ca 1781
A common fishing canoe
va'a with outrigger in
Savai'i island,
Samoa, 2009
These
wayfinding techniques, along with
outrigger canoe construction methods, were kept as
guild
secrets. Generally each island maintained a guild of navigators who had
very high status; in times of famine or difficulty these navigators
could trade for aid or evacuate people to neighboring islands. On his
first voyage of Pacific exploration Cook had the services of a
Polynesian navigator,
Tupaia, who drew a hand-drawn Chart of the islands within 2,000 miles (3,200 km) radius (to the north and west) of his home island of
Ra'iatea. Tupaia had knowledge of 130 islands and named 74 on his Chart.
[41]
Tupaia had navigated from Ra'iatea in short voyages to 13 islands. He
had not visited western Polynesia, as since his grandfather’s time the
extent of voyaging by Raiateans has diminished to the islands of eastern
Polynesia. His grandfather and father had passed to Tupaia the
knowledge as to the location of the major islands of western Polynesia
and the navigation information necessary to voyage to
Fiji,
Samoa and
Tonga.
[42] As the Admiralty orders directed Cook to search for the
“Great Southern Continent”,
Cook ignored Tupaia’s Chart and his skills as a navigator. To this day,
original traditional methods of Polynesian Navigation are still taught
in the
Polynesian outlier of
Taumako Island in the
Solomon Islands.
From a single chicken bone recovered from the archaeological site of El Arenal-1, on the
Arauco Peninsula,
Chile, a 2007 research report looking at radiocarbon dating and an
ancient DNA sequence indicate that Polynesian navigators may have
reached the Americas at least 100 years before Columbus (who arrived
1492 AD), introducing chickens to South America.
[43][44] A later report looking at the same specimens concluded:
A published, apparently pre-Columbian, Chilean specimen and six
pre-European Polynesian specimens also cluster with the same
European/Indian subcontinental/Southeast Asian sequences, providing no
support for a Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America. In
contrast, sequences from two archaeological sites on Easter Island group
with an uncommon haplogroup from Indonesia, Japan, and China and may
represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal. Modeling
of the potential marine carbon contribution to the Chilean
archaeological specimen casts further doubt on claims for pre-Columbian
chickens, and definitive proof will require further analyses of ancient
DNA sequences and radiocarbon and stable isotope data from
archaeological excavations within both Chile and Polynesia.[45]
Knowledge of the traditional Polynesian methods of navigation were
largely lost after contact with and colonization by Europeans. This left
the problem of accounting for the presence of the Polynesians in such
isolated and scattered parts of the Pacific. By the late 19th century to
the early 20th century a more generous view of Polynesian navigation
had come into favor, perhaps creating a romantic picture of their
canoes, seamanship and navigational expertise.
In the mid to late 1960s, scholars began testing sailing and paddling experiments related to Polynesian navigation:
David Lewis sailed his catamaran from Tahiti to New Zealand using
stellar navigation without instruments and
Ben Finney built a 40-foot replica of a Hawaiian double canoe "Nalehia" and tested it in Hawaii.
[46]
Meanwhile, Micronesian ethnographic research in the Caroline Islands
revealed that traditional stellar navigational methods were still in
every day use. Recent re-creations of Polynesian voyaging have used
methods based largely on Micronesian methods and the teachings of a
Micronesian navigator,
Mau Piailug.
It is probable that the Polynesian navigators employed a whole range
of techniques including use of the stars, the movement of ocean currents
and wave patterns, the air and sea interference patterns caused by
islands and
atolls,
the flight of birds, the winds and the weather. Scientists think that
long-distance Polynesian voyaging followed the seasonal paths of
birds.
There are some references in their oral traditions to the flight of
birds and some say that there were range marks onshore pointing to
distant islands in line with these
flyways. One theory is that they would have taken a
frigatebird
with them. These birds refuse to land on the water as their feathers
will become waterlogged making it impossible to fly. When the voyagers
thought they were close to land they may have released the bird, which
would either fly towards land or else return to the canoe. It is likely
that the Polynesians also used wave and swell formations to navigate. It
is thought that the Polynesian navigators may have measured the time it
took to sail between islands in "canoe-days’’ or a similar type of
expression.
Also, people of the Marshall Islands used special devices called
stick charts,
showing the places and directions of swells and wave-breaks, with tiny
seashells affixed to them to mark the positions of islands along the
way. Materials for these maps were readily available on beaches, and
their making was simple; however, their effective use needed years and
years of study.
[47]
