Polynesia (UK: , US: ; from Greek: πολύς
polys "many" and Greek: νῆσος nēsos
"island"; French: Polynésie, Spanish: Polinesia,
Samoan: Polenisia, Māori: Poronēhia or Poronihia)
is a subregion of Oceania, made up of more
than 1,000 islands scattered over the central
and southern Pacific Ocean.
The indigenous people who inhabit the islands
of Polynesia are termed Polynesians, and share
many similar traits including language family,
culture, and beliefs.
Historically, they had a strong tradition
of sailing and using stars to navigate at
night.
The largest country in Polynesia is New Zealand.
The term Polynesia was first used in 1756
by a French writer named 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.
Historically, the islands of the South Seas
have been known as South Sea Islands, and
their inhabitants as South Sea Islanders,
even though the Hawaiian Islands are located
in the North Pacific.
Another term, the Polynesian Triangle, explicitly
includes the Hawaiian Islands, as they form
its northern vertex.
== 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 (volcanoes).
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
23 million years ago and recently resurfaced
geologically 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 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 approximately 300,000 or 310,000 square
kilometres (117,000 or 118,000 sq mi) of land,
over 270,000 km2 (103,000 sq mi) are within
New Zealand; the Hawaiian archipelago comprises
about half the remainder.
The Zealandia continent has approximately
3,600,000 km2 (1,400,000 sq mi) 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 some
islands inhabited by Polynesian people are
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.
Also, small Polynesian settlements are in
Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, the
Caroline Islands, and 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).
=== 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.
Some islands of Polynesian origin are outside
the general triangle that geographically defines
the region.
==== Core area ====
The Phoenix Islands and Line Islands, most
of which are part of Kiribati, had no permanent
settlements until European colonization, but
are sometimes considered to be inside the
Polynesian triangle.
In pre-colonial times, Polynesian populations
also existed in the Kermadec Islands, the
Auckland Islands and Norfolk Island.
However, when European explorers arrived,
these islands were uninhabited.
==== Outliers ====
===== Melanesia =====
Anuta (in the Solomon Islands)
Bellona Island (in the Solomon Islands)
Emae (in Vanuatu)
Fiji
Mele (in Vanuatu)
Nuguria (in Papua New Guinea)
Nukumanu (in Papua New Guinea)
Ontong Java (in the Solomon Islands)
Pileni (in the Solomon Islands)
Rennell (in the Solomon Islands)
Sikaiana (in the Solomon Islands)
Takuu (in Papua New Guinea)
Tikopia (in the Solomon Islands)
The United States Minor Outlying Islands
===== 
Micronesia =====
Kapingamarangi (in the Federated States of
Micronesia)
Nukuoro (in the Federated States of Micronesia)
===== Subantarctic islands =====
Auckland Islands (the most southerly known
evidence of Polynesian settlement)
== History ==
=== 
Origins and expansion ===
The Polynesian people are considered to be
by linguistic, archaeological and human genetic
ancestry a subset of the sea-migrating Austronesian
people.
Tracing Polynesian languages places their
prehistoric origins in the Malay Archipelago,
and ultimately, in Taiwan.
Between about 3000 and 1000 BCE speakers of
Austronesian languages began spreading from
Taiwan into Island Southeast Asia.There are
three theories regarding the spread of humans
across the Pacific to Polynesia.
These are outlined well by Kayser et al. (2000)
and are as follows:
Express Train model: A recent (c. 3000–1000
BCE) 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 BCE, reaching western
Polynesian islands around 900 BCE.
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.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 BCE, "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.
The results of research at the Teouma Lapita
site (Efate Island, Vanuatu) and the Talasiu
Lapita site (near Nuku'alofa, Tonga) published
in 2016 supports the Express Train model;
although with the qualification that the migration
bypassed New Guinea and Island Melanesia.
The conclusion from research published in
2016 is that the initial population of those
two sites appears to come directly from Taiwan
or the northern Philippines and did not mix
with the ‘AustraloPapuans’ of New Guinea
and the Solomon Islands.
The preliminary analysis of skulls found at
the Teouma and Talasiu Lapita sites is that
they lack Australian or Papuan affinities
and instead have affinities to mainland Asian
populations.
DNA analysis of modern Polynesians indicates
that there has been intermarriage resulting
in a mixed Asian-Papuan ancestry of the Polynesians.
Research at the Teouma and Talasiu Lapita
sites implies that the migration and intermarriage,
which resulted in the mixed Asian-Papuan ancestry
of the Polynesians, occurred after the first
initial migration to Vanuatu and Tonga.The
most eastern site for Lapita archaeological
remains recovered so far 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 BCE based on C14 dating.
A 2010 study places the beginning of the human
archaeological sequences of Polynesia in Tonga
at 900 BCE.Within a mere three or four centuries,
between 1300 and 900 BCE, the Lapita archaeological
culture spread 6,000 km further to the east
from the Bismarck Archipelago, until reaching
as far as Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa which were
first populated around 3,000 years ago as
previously mentioned.
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.
This is where most Fijian-Polynesian linguistic
interaction occurred.
Tiny populations may have been involved at
first; although Professor Matisoo-Smith of
the Otago study said that the founding Māori
population of New Zealand must have been in
the hundreds, much larger than previously
thought.
=== Culture ===
The Polynesians were matrilineal and matrilocal
Stone Age societies upon arrival in Fiji,
Tonga and Samoa, after having been through
at least some time in the Bismarck Archipelago.
The modern Polynesians still show human genetic
results of a Melanesian culture which allowed
indigenous men, but not women, to "marry in"
– useful evidence for matrilocality.Atholl
Anderson wrote that analysis of mtDNA (female)
and Y chromosome (male) concluded that the
ancestors of Polynesian women came from Taiwan
while those of Polynesian men came from New
Guinea.
Subsequently, it was found that 96% of Polynesian
mtDNA has an Asian origin, as does one-third
of Polynesian Y chromosomes; the remaining
two-thirds from New Guinea and nearby islands;
this is consistent with matrilocal residence
patterns.Although matrilocality and matrilineality
receded at some early time, Polynesians and
most other Austronesian speakers in the Pacific
Islands, were/are still highly "matricentric"
in their traditional jurisprudence.
The Lapita pottery for which the general archaeological
complex of the earliest "Oceanic" Austronesian
speakers in the Pacific Islands are named
also went away in Western Polynesia.
Language, social life and material culture
were very distinctly "Polynesian" by the time
Eastern Polynesia was being settled after
a "pause" of 1000 years or 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 to 1120 AD and further afield
from 1190 to 1290 AD, with Easter Island being
settled around 1200.
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.
=== Political history ===
==== 
Tonga 16th century–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
a 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 the 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
in 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 Tui Manu'a and Malietoa–present
====
Samoa has a long history of various ruling
families, the oldest of which is the Tui Manu'a,
and the most recent of which is the Malietoa,
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
(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 Māori ====
On October 28, 1835 members of the Ngāpuhi
and surrounding Māori tribes (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 Māori 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, Māori looked to form a monarchy
inclusive of all Māori 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 Māori king in 1858.
The king's territory consisted primarily of
the lands in the center of the North Island,
and the iwi constituted the most powerful
non-signatories of the Treaty of Waitangi,
with Te Wherowhero also never having signed
it.
(See Kingitanga.)
All tribes were incorporated into rule under
the colonial government by the late 19th century.
Although Māori were given the privilege of
being legally enfranchised subjects of the
British Empire under the Treaty, Māori culture
and language (te reo Māori) were actively
suppressed by the colonial government and
by economic and social pressures from the
Pakeha society.
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
in New Zealand, due in large part to government
recognition and promotion of the language.
==== Fiji ====
The Lau islands were subject to periods of
Tongan rulership 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 had been ruled by numerous divided chieftains
until Cakobau unified the landmass.
The Lapita culture, the ancestors of the Polynesians,
existed in Fiji from about 3500 BCE until
they were displaced by the Melanesians about
a thousand years later.
(Both Samoans and subsequent Polynesian cultures
adopted Melanesian painting and tattoo 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 ====
The Cook Islands is made up of 15 islands
comprising the Northern and Southern groups.
The islands are spread out across many kilometers
of a vast ocean.
The largest of these islands is called Rarotonga,
which is also the political and economic capital
of the nation.
The Cook Islands were formerly known as the
Hervey Islands, but this name refers only
to the Northern Groups.
It is unknown when this name was changed to
reflect the current name.
It is thought that the Cook Islands were settled
in two periods: the Tahitian Period, when
the country was settled between 900 - 1300
AD.
The second settlement, the Maui Settlement,
occurred in 1600 AD, when a large contingent
from Tahiti settled in Rarotonga, in the Takitumu
district.
Cook Islanders are ethnically Polynesians
or Eastern Polynesia.
They are culturally associated with Tahiti,
Eastern Islands, NZ Maori and Hawaii.
Early in the 17th century, became the first
race to settle in New Zealand.
==== Tuvalu ====
The reef islands and atolls of Tuvalu are
identified as being part of West Polynesia.
During pre-European-contact times there was
frequent canoe voyaging between the islands
as Polynesian navigation skills are recognised
to have allowed deliberate journeys on double-hull
sailing canoes or outrigger canoes.
Eight of the nine islands of Tuvalu were inhabited;
thus the name, Tuvalu, means "eight standing
together" in Tuvaluan.
The pattern of settlement that is believed
to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread
out from Samoa and Tonga into the Tuvaluan
atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone
for migration into the Polynesian Outlier
communities in Melanesia and Micronesia.Stories
as to the ancestors of the Tuvaluans vary
from island to island.
On Niutao, Funafuti and Vaitupu the founding
ancestor is described as being from Samoa;
whereas on Nanumea the founding ancestor is
described as being from Tonga.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 11th to mid-13th
century.
The oral 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.Fishing was the
primary source of protein, with the cuisine
of Tuvalu reflecting 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 salt from the storm-surge of a tropical
cyclone.
== Links to the Americas ==
The sweet potato, called kūmara in Māori
and kumar in Quechua, is native to the Americas
and was widespread in Polynesia when Europeans
first reached the Pacific.
Remains of the plant in the Cook Islands have
been radiocarbon-dated to 1000, and current
thinking is that it was brought to central
Polynesia c. 700 and spread across Polynesia
from there, possibly by Polynesians who had
traveled to South America and back.Thor Heyerdahl
proposed in the mid-20th century that the
Polynesians had migrated from the northwest
coast of Canada by large whale-hunting dugouts,
and from South America on balsa-log boats.
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."
== Cultures ==
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,
eastern parts of Fiji, the Lau islands and
extends 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.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 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.
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."
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.
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.
The size of the island inhabited determined
whether or 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.
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.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
was an ingrained practice.
Dwellings were imbued with character by the
skill of their building.
Body decoration and jewelry is of an 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 traveled 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."
== 
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, 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.
== 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 postage stamp sales.
== Inter-Polynesian cooperation ==
The first major attempt at uniting the Polynesian
islands was by Imperial Japan in the 1930s,
when various theorists (chiefly Hachirō Arita)
began promulgating the idea of what would
soon become known as the Greater East Asia
Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Under the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity
Sphere, all nations stretching from Southeast
and Northeast Asia to Oceania would be united
under one, large, cultural and economic bloc
which would be free from Western imperialism.
The policy theorists who conceived it, along
with the Japanese public, largely saw it as
a pan-Asian movement driven by ideals of freedom
and independence from Western colonial oppression.
In practice, however, it was frequently corrupted
by militarists who saw it as an effective
policy vehicle through which to strengthen
Japan's position and advance its dominance
within Asia.
At its greatest extent, it stretched from
Japanese occupied Indochina in the west to
the Gilbert Islands in the east, although
it was originally planned to stretch as far
east as Hawai'i and Easter Island and as far
west as India.
This never came to fruition, however, as Japan
was defeated during World War II and subsequently
lost all power and influence it had.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.
== 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.
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 3,200 km (2,000 mi) 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.
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.
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.
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.
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 12-meter (40-foot) replica
of a Hawaiian double canoe "Nalehia" and tested
it in Hawaii.
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.
== See also ==
List of Polynesians
Polynesian mythology
Polynesian Society
Polynesian Voyaging Society
Films set in Polynesia
