Ancient Polynesians were the first to cross the Pacific from the shores of Southeast Asia in about 1500 B.C. and little by little they spread through the islands of this ocean . Those voyages of colonization were a spectacular achievement for an ancient people who sailed in canoes.
Today, Polynesians are spread out over an area that forms a huge triangle, with the Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island as vertices. Despite being spread over such an extensive area, genetically the Polynesians form a single group. They speak dialects of the same language and share many cultural traits.
The exact origin of the Polynesians is uncertain. The spread of human colonization across the remote Pacific began around 1600 BC, with the appearance of a distinctive culture called the Lapita . Evidence of it is found in pottery from Lapita sites, usually elaborately decorated with patterned designs. There are many such sites scattered from Melanesia to Western Polynesia, and from New Guinea to Samoa. Some archaeologists believe that the Lapita culture originated in Southeast Asia, while others believe that it developed locally in Melanesia. However, they agree in considering the Lapita as the ancestors of the Polynesians.
Lapita peoples way of life
The Lapita way of life seems to have been very centered on the sea. Most of the Lapita sites are coastal towns and in some cases the people seem to have built their houses on stilts in the water . The sea provided a good amount of food - fish and molluscs - and the shells were used to make hooks and adzes, as well as ornaments such as bracelets, beads and other decorative and valuable objects. Lapita settlers also brought with them to the islands where they settled domesticated animals and plants.
The expansion of the Lapita appears to have been rapid, suggesting that they possessed sophisticated naval and navigational techniques . It seems likely that the appearance of the great double-hulled canoe was a key element in their success. The Lapita migrations may have been deliberate, for they brought with them enough equipment, plants, and animals, as well as enough people to create settlements that would take root. Certainly, their journeys were not just one way, for there is evidence of long-distance trade networks for obsidian and other objects that constantly held Lapita communities together. The Lapita culture appears to have been around for about 1,000 years.
The colonization of the pacific
The main features of Polynesian culture seem to have developed on the islands of Samoa and Tonga. Like their Lapita ancestors, the Polynesians appear to have been seafarers. Around 300 years B.C. travelers from Samoa and Tonga began another emigration to the east. They discovered and colonized the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Tuamotus Islands, and the Marquesas Islands. 400 years A.D., both Hawaii and Easter Island were colonized -two of the vertices of the Polynesian triangle-. New Zealand, the third apex, and the hardest to reach, was colonized around 1000 AD .
There is no doubt that the colonizing voyages of the Polynesians were deliberate and that prior to them there were voyages of exploration to find new islands.
Like their Lapith ancestors, they brought with them everything they needed to create successful settlements. Only in a few cases the colonies did not prosper and were abandoned .
Polynesian societies were organized into tribes and clans. Normally, there was still another division, the one between those who were chiefs and those who were not; there was also a form of slavery. The most elaborate social hierarchies developed in Hawaii, Tonga, and Tahiti. The Polynesians shared a very similar set of religious beliefs. The ceremonial precincts, called marae , were a prominent feature of the settlements and provided a meeting point for ceremonies and communal gatherings.
Agricultural techniques
Polynesian agriculture was based on a number of crops, including yams, sweet potatoes, taro, breadfruit, bananas, and sugar cane. Polynesians practiced shifting agriculture, meaning they cleared a piece of land, burned the vegetation, and then planted crops . This cultivated area was then left to lie fallow so that the natural vegetation would slowly return.
In some islands very complex irrigation systems were used to bring water to the fields . Taro, in particular, was grown on flooded land. Pigs, dogs and chickens were the main domestic animals, although not all of them were brought to all the islands. Most of the domesticated plants used by the colonists originated in Southeast Asia. The sweet potato, however, came from America, which indicates that at one point the Polynesians reached South America, from where they brought it.
With the passage of time, the tradition of pottery making, which the Polynesians inherited from the Lapita culture, seems to have declined and complex decoration was simplified or abandoned. Lastly, it seems that the Polynesians stopped making pottery altogether.
Incredibletrips
The colonization of the remote islands of the Pacific is all the more impressive as it was achieved without charts or navigational instruments . Double-hulled Polynesian canoes were large and fast, capable of traveling thousands of miles. The canoes were manned by skilled sailors, who used detailed knowledge of the stars, cloud patterns, winds, and waves, as well as the habits of seabirds to track their journey and find land. In 1976, the skill of these navigators was demonstrated when the Hokulea, a replica of a traditional Polynesian canoe, sailed from Tahiti to Hawaii using only ancient navigation techniques.
Easter Island
One of the most amazing achievements of the Polynesian navigators was reaching and colonizing Rapa Nui, or Easter Island. This small piece of land, only 168 km2 in area, is one of the most remote Polynesian islands . The difficulty of the journey probably means that only one group of settlers was able to reach it, in the first centuries of the Christian era. Then these people developed in isolation, building large platforms (ahu ) along the coastline and carving hundreds of huge stone statues (moai ) of their ancestors, many of which were located on those platforms with their backs to the sea.
The islanders may have been responsible for their own downfall by destroying the forest of huge palm trees that covered the island, even though those trees were the foundation of their society . The resulting lack of wood stopped the production of statues, as there were no more rollers, levers or ropes. The islanders were also unable to continue building canoes, so they stopped catching deep-sea fish. Fuel for cremations ran out and burials became the new system for treating the deceased. Food became scarce and, after centuries of peace, violence broke out. Clans raided each other, knocking down the statues of rivals.
Ancestor worship was replaced by a new social system based on a warrior elite . Every year, a new leader, or "Birdman », was chosen through an endurance race. Each candidate's representative had to climb down a cliff, swim to an islet, and bring back, intact, the first sooty tern egg. When the first Europeans arrived on the island, on Easter Sunday 1722, the population had declined catastrophically and virtually not a single tree remained on the island.