It was pointed out upthread that that’s a typo. MD acknowledged he meant “east” there.
Southeast Asia, it appears. They came from the East, traveling West to the islands.
You do realize that the Pacific Ocean is east of Southeast Asia?
Otherwise, it sounds like you are suggesting they migrated via the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Now that’s impressive!
Oopsie.
That’s two separate oopsies in one thread. Something hinky is going on brainwise.
"…thank you so much for bringing up such a painful subject. While you’re at it, why don’t you give me a nice paper cut and pour lemon juice on it? "
They went the long way around. The chief’s wife’s scolding for not asking directions is still a legend among them.
I believe it’s called a “close encounter of the fifth kind”.
(Fourth kind is anal probes…)
Oddly enough, I’m reading a book about climate changes in history - The Earth Transformed by Peter Frankopan. In a short mention of the Polynesian expansion around 1200, he says: (P286)
Wetter conditions coincided with a new wave of migrations and setttlements from Polynesia to Hawai’i, Aotearoa (New Zealand) and Rapa Nui (Easter Island). This was also the moment of a single contact between Polynesian and South American groups - either a a result of a group or groups of the former journeying across the entire expanse of the Pacific and returning successfully, or as a result of groups of the latter setting off and reaching the Polynesian Islands c.1200.
The footnote for this is A. Ioannidis et al., ‘Native American gene flow into Polynesia predating Easter Island settlement’, Nature 583 (2020), 572-7.
My money is on the Polynesians making the pickup trip or booty call.
They might have met on Rapa Nui.
The paper suggests that American admixture in the Rapa Nui people occurred later and was due to Europeans bringing Chilean or Peruvian (I can’t recall which) slaves to Rapa Nui. The “single event” admixture event with a different Polynesian group was with people from what is now Colombia.
Is there any tradition in Hawaii that they knew of or travelled to the continent? It’s only 2400 miles. That seems to me the logical next hop if the Polynesians were still exploring.
I’m not sure I follow the logic. “There’s a continent 2,400 miles away” can only be a premise leading to a conclusion if you know (or at least believe) the continent exists.
I have also seen speculation that exploration was driven as much by population growth leading to diminished resources on small islands as anything. A kind of relief valve. The Hawaiian islands was/are a chain of relatively large islands compared to, say, Rapa Nui. Perhaps they didn’t continue east because they didn’t have need of such a relief valve.
My understanding is that Hawaii was densely populated for a Stone Age culture at the time of discovery by Europeans. So it’s not that they didn’t need a relief valve.
The main problem is that it’s not obvious which way to new lands from Hawaii. They don’t know there’s a large continent 2000 miles to the east. The only nearby islands not already occupied are the rest of the Hawaiian chain going off to the northwest. Those are way too small to be settled, but they may have tried going further in that direction, hoping there’d be something bigger.
I’ll suggest that a lot of expeditions set off from this or that Pacific island going in this or that direction based on little more than a hunch or legend. Never to find land and eventually succumb to the elements at sea.
The loss rate of failed missions over prior millennia might well have been horrific even by 16th century European standards. If any given island is overpopulating itself into ecological collapse or simply has more mouths than food, the willingness to roll the dice on an expedition to elsewhere mostly unknown might make a lot of sense to folks in that predicament.
Which is not to suggest there weren’t successful explorations and even return trips. But the successes may have been a scay-small fraction of the total.
History, and progeny, after all are generated by the survivors.
Yes, I suspect that the discovery of new islands was done by folks who were trying to get somewhere else, either to a known island or a rumored one. It’s hard to imagine a scenario that would drive a group to build a boat, stock it with supplies, and then set off in a random direction hoping to find undiscovered land. They surely had some destination in mind and some expectation of getting there alive. But some large fraction of the voyagers got lost or were blown off course; most of those folk died at sea, I tiny fraction of them hit upon uninhabited islands and founded lasting colonies.
Agree. And those that did find a new island to live on with enough resources eventually sailing back to where they came was proof there are other places out there awaiting discovery, which likely stoked more interest in exploration. Given enough time I suspect the Polynesians would eventually find the Americas and make trips back and forth there, but the arrival of the Europeans during the age of discovery cut off that potential historical trajectory.
I thought it was the other way around - slave traders from Peru capturing people from Rapa Nui and bringing them to South America.
Yeah, that’s also how I heard it about the history of the island. IIRC, there was a trial that freed the Rapa Nui people from slavery in what is now Peru, and they returned to their island, most probably having already mixed up with the local Peruvian population.
The logic was… the Polynesian expansion went in a generally westerly direction because, of course, they came from the east and knew about those islands.
I haven’t seen much about the motivations - although the legend for Easter Island was that the colonists were departing their home island where they were in conflict with other factions. Presumably overpopulation and logic -“they found some islands, there must be more out there” - helped push the expansion drive.
If overpopulation was one motivation, no wonder it meant a pause when they reached Hawaii, it propbably did take a while to fill those islands.
IIRC the problem on Easter Island was that likely by the time overcrowding was a problem they also did not have the trees to build larger ocean-going canoes.
I think we have that East-West mixup there, again.