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Polynesia (from Greek, "many islands") is a large grouping of over 1,000 islands in the central and southern Pacific Ocean. Geographically, Polynesia is a triangle with its three corners at Hawai'i, New Zealand, and Easter Island. Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Marquesas, and French Polynesia are the other main island groups located within the Polynesian triangle. There is some overlap with Melanesia. The following islands and groups of islands have been considered to be part of Melanesia:
- Fiji (except for Rotuma, which is polynesian)
- New Caledonia
- New Guinea
- Solomon IslandsThe Solomon Islands are a nation in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Papua New Guinea and is part of the British Commonwealth. It consists of more than 990 islands, which together cover a land mass of 28,000 square kilometres. Solomon Islands ( In Detail)
- VanuatuThe Republic of Vanuatu is a country located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago is located some 1,750 km east of Australia, 500 km north-east of New Caledonia, west of Fiji and south of the Solomon Islands. Its colonial name, New Hebrides, is no
Polynesian languagesThe Polynesian languages are a group of related languages spoken in the region known as Polynesia. They are generally considered to be a part of the Austronesian language group, belonging to the Eastern Malayo-Polynesian branch of that family. There are a are spoken by the Polynesian indigenous people. Culturally, Polynesia divides into two distinct groups, Eastern Polynesia and Western Polynesia. The culture of Western Polynesia is conditioned to high populations and infective diseases. It has strong institutions of marriage, and well developed judicial, monetary and trading traditions. It reaches almost from JapanJapan (, Nippon/Nihon literally "the origin of the sun") is a country in East Asia situated on a chain of islands east of the Asian continent on the western edge of the Pacific Ocean. The largest of these islands are, from north to south, Hokkaido , Honsh, through IndonesiaThe Republic of Indonesia the world's largest archipelago, is located between the Southeast Asian peninsula and Australia, between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Indonesia borders Malaysia on the island of Borneo ( Kalimantan in Bahasa Indonesia), Papua N up to but not including the Marquesas IslandsThe Marquesas Islands is a group of islands in French Polynesia. They were named by Alvaro de Mendana who reached them in 1595. In French they are known as the Iles Marquises . With a combined land area of 1,050 kmē (405 sq. miles), the Marquesas are amon. Because of a strong readiness to accept new ideas and the numbers of Christian missionaries in the islands polynesians readily adopted ChristianityChristian cross and its many variations are widely recognized as an ancient Christian symbol. Christianity is an Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the New Testament. Although Christians generally chara.
From the Marquesas Islands eastward, the cultures are highly adapted to isolation. Populations were genetically in-bred. Women traditionally sought sex with off-islanders, to enhance their chances of bearing a healthy child. Anthropologists term their system of kinship the Hawaiian system. Religion, farming, fishing, weather prediction, catamaran construction and navigation were highly-developed skills, because the population of an entire island could hang on them. Trading was distinguished between luxuries, and emergency aid and evacuation. Many low-lying islands could suffer severe famine if their gardens were poisoned by the salt from the storm-surge of a hurricane. In these cases fishing, the primary source of protein, would not ease loss of calories. Navigators, in particular, were revered and each island maintained a house of navigation, with a boat-building area.
At a time when European sailors were navigating by keeping a watch for the shore-line in daylight, polynesians were commonly navigating the whole of the Pacific Ocean except for the arctic and antarctic areas. They used a whole range of nevigation techniques including use of the stars, the movement of ocean currents and wave patterns, the air and sea interferance patterns caused by islands and atolls, the flight of birds, the winds and weather.
