A Brief Introduction to Polynesia

Polynesia consists of thousands of islands scattered from the central to eastern Pacific Ocean.
Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within a triangle linking Hawaii to the north, Easter Island to the east, and New Zealand to the southwest.

• Museum Location

• 

Polynesia’s political segmentation is rather complex. Hawaii belongs to the U.S.A., while the Society Islands, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas and the Tubuais are the overseas territories of France. Easter Island belongs to Chile, and the western half of Samoa is an independent nation, but the eastern half is a territory of the U.S.A. Meanwhile, Tonga is an independent kingdom, and New Zealand is an independent nation.
The Polynesians are fairly tall, with a light complexion and straight or wavy hair. They speak Polynesian, a family of Austro-Polynesian. Despite their physical distance, and the open waters that separate them, the Polynesians present a homogeneous appearance and culture. This is testament to the fact that their arrival in this region and dispersion across the islands are relatively recent.

The Polynesian society, for the most part, was based on a pyramid-like structure, consisting of rulers, leaders and commons. It was believed that the rulers had a religious power, called mana, and were the physical extension of God. Farming, mainly growing potatoes and breadfruit trees, as well as fishing, are the primary means of sustenance for the Polynesians.

When the Europeans first came into contact with the Polynesians after venturing into the Pacific Ocean about 200 years ago, the Polynesians were still living in an age of stone. This raised a question in the minds of many people. How could people living in a stone age migrate across the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean? Although the Polynesians have their own stories of these journeys, research and analysis have found it difficult to determine the authenticity of these stories. This is largely due to omissions, or fictional extensions in the stories, which were likely to have occurred in the storytelling process, due to the absence of a written language. Anthropologists have therefore come to depend on an analysis of the spoken language and archaeological excavations as a means of reconstructing Polynesian history. It is now an accepted view that the Polynesian homeland was originally somewhere in Southeast Asia, and that they happened to settle on the island chain of Melanesia, covering the Bismarck Archipelago, the Solomons, New Hebrides and Fiji, en route to the Eastern and Central Pacific.

• 
• 
• 
•