Sea People by Christina Thompson documents the current solution to the
“problem of Polynesian origins.” The problem addresses “the Polynesian
Triangle, an area of ten million square miles in the middle of the Pacific
Ocean,” bigger than North America and 99.9% water. The European explorers took
three centuries to fully discover some thousand scattered islands. The
questions about who the Polynesians were have been hindered by prejudice and
arrogance. Today (published 2019) “the latest science brings us closer to the
oral history of the Polynesians.”
Polynesia consists of high islands
(volcanic peaks) and low islands (reefs).
Tupaia of the Society Islands
accompanied Cook to New Zealand. This provided one of the first hints that all
the Polynesian peoples were related. Tupaia and the Maori of New Zealand could
understand each other, even though their homes were separated by a distance of
over 2,500 miles of open ocean.
Somehow the irony that Western
civilization expected Polynesian oral traditions to be literally factual when
this was not demanded of the Bible seemed completely missed by everyone.
Two advances in the latter half of the
twentieth century clarified the situation on Polynesia. (1) Carbon-14 dating.
This technology took the guesswork and uncertainty out of the timeline.
Interestingly, the verified time lime more closely matched the timeline derived
from the oral histories than from competing scholarship. (2) Polynesian
Voyaging Society. In this time, voyages were made across wide expanses of the
Pacific (e.g., Hawaii to Tahiti) using no western navigation methods. Using
stars and swells and birds, many canoe voyages were able to navigate over these
long distances.
The work about and by Polynesian was
hampered by racism.
During WW II airmen were trained in
survival skills learned by Polynesian anthropologists.
The European explorers and
anthropologists brought many incorrect ideas to bear on the investigation of
Polynesia. Early on they believed that the land in the southern hemisphere had
to balance the northern hemisphere, so in spite of all evidence to the contrary,
they searched for Australis Incognito. For a period, they were convinced that
the Polynesians were Aryans (Indo-European) as opposed to African or
Asian. Other theories suggested that the
Polynesian drifted from island to island at the whims of the weather and currents.
The latest
science concerning the origin of the Polynesians validates their oral histories.
Comprehensive, fascinating, and readable.
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