Polynesian Migration

Wayfinder: Polynesian Story and Origin

Heyerdahls attracted the greatest amount of interest from Thor Heyerdahls and Andrew Sharp's assaults on the Polynesian Orthodox settlements. However, experts' opinions were almost everywhere against Heyerdahl's theory, because he did not bring any sound proof of settling in America and ignored all this in favour of a final background in Southeast Asia.

Archeological digs and analysis of the found material, which were necessary to finally determine that the native Polynesians had emigrated from the Isle of South East Asia to Polynesia, had not been carried out. The Polynesians were on their way to Polynesia through Melanesia or Micronesia, let alone where they came from in Southeast Asia.

Archeological work later carried out throughout Polynesia and Melanesia did not go well with Heyerdahl's theories of the United States. By excavating and analyzing artefacts and other found material, archeologists were able to create a Polish colony pattern that demonstrates the Polynesian Eastern Polynesian movements to the Pacific, the "true" Polynesian home on the Polynesian west rim itself, sketching the distribution of the Polynesian tribe's populations, and the absence of proof of a perceptible demographic shift from America to Polynesia.

When the Polynesians discovered an unmistakably ornamented potter's workshop named Lapita, it was the first proof of the general journey to the Pacific. Lapita Culture Park, consisting of its ceramics and associated artefacts, began with archaeological digs from the archipelago on the north-eastern coastline of New Guinea to the archipelago on the west outskirts of Polynesia.

Not only did these places with their characteristic artefacts show that the native Polynesians were sailing through Melanesia, and not Micronesia as some suggested, but also that it probably did not take more than a few hundred years from islands to islands through Melanesia to Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, about 2,000 leagues eastwards of their departure point off New Guinea.

This was followed by the realisation that the long-awaited Polynesian home was not outside the West Indies, but really in Polynesia itself. Lapita travellers were regarded as ancestors of the Polynesians, but not yet identifiable. Only when they began to adjust to living in the remote Central Pacific archipelago of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa did this indicate that the unmistakable Polynesian culture centre emerged from its lapita root.

The Polynesian Migration RoutesPolynesian Centres. Marquesas Island was arrived between 200 BC and 300 AD, and although there is still no proof, some archeologists believe that the Cook and Society Isles may have been populated from Western Polynesia even before. Travellers left this Eastern Polynesian nucleus to explore the length and width of the Polynesian Delta and arrived at the remote Hawaiian Island (around 400-500 A.D.), Easter Island (around 400 A.D.) and New Zealand (around 1000 A.D.) to close the population.

In spite of large archeological excavations in Hawai'i, the Marquesas, Easter Island (including some works donated by Heyerdahl) and other US isles, no pot fragments from South America or other identifiable US artefacts have been found. On a prehistorical level, the material is Polynesian. There is no clear proof of the possible existence of mankind contacts between America and Polynesia other than the appearance of the yam in Polynesia, a local crop in South America.

The archeologist Dr. Patrick Kirch found yams from 1000 AD on the Cook Islands in 1990, thus affirming the early establishment of these crops in Cephalonia. If they were taken on a float from South America (and then distributed around Polynesia by canoe), or if some fearless Polynesians were sailing all the way to South America and carrying yams on their way back with them, is still not known.

Dr. Yoshihihihiko Sinoto of the Bishop's Museum of Honolulu found the remnants of an old traveler' s cannon that had been dug into the earth when a tidal wave hit Huahine near Tahiti between 850 and 1100 AD. This migration was intended due to the spread of indigenous flora and fauna throughout Polynesia at the moment of Europe's initial contacts and the archeological proof of the early adoption of these flora and fauna.

The Polynesian dietary crops except the yam - especially tarot, banana, yam root, bread fruit and sucrose- and the three indigenous species - pork, dogs and chickens - come from the AP. The most Polynesian isles have these domesticians, suggesting that colonisation was intended, as random floaters probably did not take all the flora and fauna with them on brief journeys between the isles or on fishery missions.

In addition, the existence of pork, canine and poultry bone on the lower plains of a number of early archeological places, together with an indication of the use of indigenous vegetation, bears witness to the likelihood that travellers were carrying the colonisation strains with them and that they were not imported by a long line of accidental drifting.