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Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia
- geoburke 8y agoI've often wondered the same about Staten Island.
- pvg 8y agoSame way, free ferries.
- trevyn 8y ago“...the western world has been puzzled by how the vast Pacific could have been navigated relying only on the stars.” Strap your undesirables to rafts and push ‘em out to sea? I don’t see why there has to be intentional “navigation” to end up inhabiting a place.
- joshuaheard 8y agoRight. If you're exploring, who cares what direction. From what I understand, though, they used the prevailing wind and wave directions to navigate based on knowledge passed down over the generations.
- ceejayoz 8y agoOr just folks getting lost. That's basically how the plants and animals got to these places. Some colonization was likely intentional. Some was probably accidental, too.
- EdwardDiego 8y agoAccidental colonisation? They accidentally transported their livestock and staple fruits with them too? They accidentally sent several waves of colonisation to new islands?
- Taniwha 8y agowell, not a lot of livestock - they did have dogs
- darkpuma 8y agoCook often gets credit for introducing pigs, but my understanding is that this is now discredited. >Pigs (Sus scrofa) have played an important cultural role in Hawaii since Polynesians first introduced them in approximately AD 1200. Additional varieties of pigs were introduced following Captain Cook's arrival in Hawaii in 1778 and it has been suggested that the current pig population may descend primarily, or even exclusively, from European pigs. Although populations of feral pigs today are an important source of recreational hunting on all of the major islands, they also negatively impact native plants and animals. As a result, understanding the origins of these feral pig populations has significant ramifications for discussions concerning conservation management, identity and cultural continuity on the islands. Here, we analysed a neutral mitochondrial marker and a functional nuclear coat colour marker in 57 feral Hawaiian pigs. Through the identification of a new mutation in the MC1R gene that results in black coloration, we demonstrate that Hawaiian feral pigs are mostly the descendants of those originally introduced during Polynesian settlement, though there is evidence for some admixture. As such, extant Hawaiian pigs represent a unique historical lineage that is not exclusively descended from feral pigs of European origin. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.160304 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsos.160... Apparently they also brought along chickens.
- itwasnoaccident 8y agoA similar route of introduction can be shown for Pacific chickens and Pacific rats, both of which were introduced to most Polynesian islands in pre-European times. The full inventory of pre-European tropical crops in Polynesia alone runs to almost 50 species. A lot of this is covered in Pathway of the Birds.
- 725686 8y agoSomeone accidentally discovered island A. Goes back for livestock and fruits. Gets lost and ends up in island B. Rinse, repeat.
- madhadron 8y agoIn this case, they were doing repeated voyages and running trade routes across these masses of ocean. It wasn't undesirables. The second major settling of Hawai'i, for example, was by Tahitians who took over and maintained strong ties to Tahiti for quite a while before they went into a period of isolation.
- deepsun 8y agoBuilding a raft, even a crappy one, not even sea-worthy, is a significant investment just to strap someone to it.
- madhadron 8y agoThe history of westerners having stupid ideas about Polynesia is entertaining, but we're actually in a place where we know a lot about this. If you want to know more about it, the two things I would recommend are: Andrew Crowe, 'Pathway of the Birds', an excellent summary of what we know about the settling of the islands and how they sailed among them. The Vaka Tuamako project (http://vaka.org/ http://vaka.org/) is working with a group of islanders who have preserved their voyaging system. The Hawaiian one was rebuilt after being last, but this one is intact.
- abrowne 8y agoThat books looks great, thanks! In case anyone else is interested, I did the research: no cheap used copies yet. U of Hi Press sells it direct for about the same as Amazon w/ tax: https://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/pathway-of-the-birds-the-voyaging-achievements-of-maori-and-their-polynesian-ancestors/ https://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/pathway-of-the-birds-th...
- itwasnoaccident 8y agoPathway of the Birds is evidently published in both New Zealand and Hawaii. Available through Amazon too. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41112497-pathway-of-the-birds https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41112497-pathway-of-the-.... Clear, thoughtful and well illustrated with loads of maps. The full title is Pathway of the Birds: The Voyaging Achievements of Māori and their Polynesian Ancestors
- gerbilly 8y agoAlso this is a great resource: https://www.amazon.ca/Vaka-Moana-Voyages-Ancestors-Settlement/dp/0824832132 https://www.amazon.ca/Vaka-Moana-Voyages-Ancestors-Settlemen...
- lazyjones 8y agoPolynesia is a group of islands spread over a large area, but only a few 100 Km apart from each other at most. Why is it so unthinkable that the native population spread slowly from Indonesia, Australia or New Guinea by exploring nearby islands and settling there?
- EdwardDiego 8y agoNew Zealand/Aotearoa was settled by people from the Marquesas Islands, as was Hawaii. Hawaii is "1313 miles from Midway Island, 1337 miles to Christmas Island, and 2395 miles from San Francisco." to quote Quora. The closest useful island to New Zealand is the Raoul Island in the Kermadecs (which was settled by Polynesians from New Zealand). I encourage you to look at Google Maps and understand the scale of the Pacific. https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/Marquesas+Islands,+French+Polynesia/@-32.8456465,-176.9597958,5.23z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x7635e66a3a79a46d:0x16a7af39097eb98e!8m2!3d-9.7812162!4d-139.0817124?hl=en https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/Marquesas+Islands,+Frenc...
- lazyjones 8y ago> Hawaii is 1313 miles from Midway Island Close-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papahānaumokuākea_Marine_National_Monument#/media/File:Map_PMNM_2016.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papahānaumokuākea_Marine_Natio... Clearly easy to navigate due to many small islands / reefs. > The closest useful island to New Zealand is the Raoul Island in the Kermadecs (which was settled by Polynesians from New Zealand). 980 Km distance or so, less than e.g. Iceland from the rest of Europe. Where is the mystery? What I'd like to know is how these atolls and islands looked a few 1000 years ago, with lower sea levels (what is the rough estimate, 3 meters per millennium?).
- caymanjim 8y agoMost of the small south Pacific islands were first settled in the past 1000-2000 years, and even some major ones like Hawaii and New Zealand. Sea levels haven't changed much at all in the past 3000 years. Certainly nothing approaching even one meter over that time.
- nategri 8y agoI always like to think that the initial waves of human interstellar colonization will be a historical rhyme with the Polynesian expansion---a loose federation of populations separated by distances barely-surmountable by technology, inexorably drifting toward unique cultural identities.
- pvg 8y agoA tub carved out of a log or a big basket has a better shot at getting you to a nearby island than anything we have offering the remotest possibility of getting to even the nearest star. There's no technological parallel between these things, much as we wish there was.
- derefr 8y agoThe GP's point wasn't that there is a technological parallel in the process, but that there would be a sociological parallel in the result.
- pvg 8y agoa loose federation of populations separated by distances barely-surmountable by technology There is no obvious, analogous path to this happening with interstellar travel, even if you stipulate a civilization that has a strong interest and incentive in navigating and exploiting solar system space.
- function_seven 8y agoNot yet. Nearest stars are only a few light years away. The journey might span a few generations. The raft will be a self-sufficient colony that converts onboard matter via fission or fusion to energy, and that energy into every other necessity for sustaining life. It'll first start out as a proof of concept, only traveling around the local planets. Just like seafaring was first just a fishing thing near the coast. Maybe they try their hand at colonizing Titan first Then one day, some group will decide to risk it and push off into space. Their distant ancestors will arrive at a suitable planet, and decide to give it a whirl. All of this is just fun to think about, but just like the settlers of Polynesia 1,000 years ago, it's not unfathomable that 1,000 years into the future, we would have the means to engineer something like this. If we don't annihilate ourselves first. That's the historical rhyme.
- dreamcompiler 8y agoDeceptive title. The science around this issue was settled definitively in 1976 and multiple lines of evidence have only strengthened the story since then. It's no longer even remotely mysterious: People built boats and sailed eastward from Asia and navigated without instruments. Thor Heyerdahl was wrong and Captain Cook was right. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-voyage-kon-tiki-misled-world-about-navigating-pacific-180952478/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-v...
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- technotony 8y agoAnd presumably if there remains any debate about this we could settle it with a genomic study.
- HarryHirsch 8y agoWouldn't be surprised if Cavalli-Sforza had done it already.
- gerbilly 8y agoGenomic studies suggest that the ancestor of the Polynesian people were from a combination of New Guinea and ancient Taiwan.
- aaron695 8y agohttps://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/game-changing-study-suggests-first-polynesians-voyaged-all-way-east-asia https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/10/game-changing-study-... Word of the day 'BP' - 'years before present'. The 'present' in BP is set at 1950, as this was close to when radiometric dating began to be used - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20026-8 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-20026-8
- boatjd 8y agoIt was shocking to learn Guam was settled 4,000 years ago by the Chamorro people who built boats and seemingly sailed 2,000+ miles from Southeast Asia.
- simonsays2 8y agoStrap two canoes together, pop up a sail, you have a catamaran. Ever been on one in open ocean? Smoother sailing than a keel boat and no seasick. Follow stars and birds and currents. Not magic.
- tabtab 8y agoSimple: Mononesia-1 met Mononesia-2.
- blunte 8y agoSometimes the aliens don't drop people off where they picked the up from.
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- i_feel_great 8y agoI took Anthropology 101 at Auckland Uni and was lectured by Doug Sutton. He suggested the reason they sailed against the prevailing currents is that when they ran out of food and water without finding land, they let the currents carry them back to their origin. The other way around is certain death. Also that they may have been driven by overpopulation pressures to seek out new land.
- hinkley 8y agoEvery bicyclist learns this the first few times out. Some have very strong opinions about ever doing it again on purpose. My guess is it took almost no time at all for that to become standard practice.