To celebrate Polynesia I decided to make Poisson Cru (a Tahitian ceviche) and Faikakai Malimali (A Tonga sweet dumplings served with coconut syrup). Both of these dishes are common in Polynesia and represent the history of the islands and the many delicious locally available foods of the South Pacific.

For this post, I thought I would try a different approach. Instead of telling the history of the dishes, I am going to review the archaeology of Polynesia. Why? Because how and when these islands were populated is a longstanding debate within the archaeological community. And because I find it fascinating.

Through the years, archaeologists have proposed a range of ideas about Polynesia; from the idea that the peopling of Polynesia was accidental, to the idea that this was how people got to the Americas, among others. These ideas reflect the want to understand how people came to populate the many islands spread across the Pacific and what role it played in human history. Many of the ideas also reflect the problematic view (and incorrect one) that the most advanced civilizations were in Europe, and most other places were a backwater.

Spread across these islands, from east to west, archaeologists have recovered evidence of what we call the “Lapita Cultural Complex.” Named for a style of pottery, the Lapita culture dates from about 1600 to 500 BCE. While Lapita is perhaps the first identifiable cultural complex, people made it to Australia and New Zealand some 50,000 years ago. This was no easy feat as this requires crossing the open ocean and the Sunda Strait. The uncovering of Lapita pottery, along with other archaeological indicators, tells us that these peoples were fully capable of oceanic journeys, could locate islands, and could adapt and settle on an array of island environments, as far back as 3,000 years ago if not even longer.

This may not seem controversial to us today, but not so long ago this feat was considered improbable if not impossible. Why? Because Europeans did not manage to sail across the Pacific until 1519-1522 CE with the Magellan expedition. Moreover, islands represent only 0.7% of the total area of the ocean, making finding them, and colonizing them, incredibly difficult. When we finally did accept that they made these amazing journeys, scholars jumped to conclude that it must have been by accident. A magnificent “oops, we blew off course and look what we found” moment. The absurdity and racism behind these beliefs are all too apparent.

In reality, while the causes of migrations are often extremely complex and in many prehistoric cases unknowable, we cannot dismiss that this colonization was methodical and intentional. It helps if we change our mindset from thinking of the ocean as a large open space largely devoid of people to a sort of intercontinental highway which facilitated movement between places.

But, how do we know it was intentional? If you have read my previous posts, you are aware that a common them is domestication. Here too, domestication offers a key. The people that set out and eventually colonized these islands brought with them all they would need to establish a settlement: men, women, tools (such as for fishing), and non-local domesticated plants and animals (yams and pigs). Likewise, archaeologists have recovered ancient boats, such as the one below found on the south coast of New Zealand, dating to 1400 CE.

These journeys happened over hundreds and hundreds of years. In fact, some of the last places settled, Rapa Nui and the islands of Hawaii for example, happened fairly late, 1200 and 1219 repsectively. The movement into these places, a few hundred years before the arrival of Europeans, marks the last prehistoric expansion of modern humans (Feder 224)-the culmination of thousands of years of voyaging.

Here, I want to digress to Rapa Nui, which you may know as Easter Island. We talk about Rapa Nui in my Introduction to Archaeology course because how and why it collapsed is a great example of how dangerous archaeology can be when applied poorly. Made popular by Jared Diamond (among others) most people think of Rapa Nui as this lost, great civilization that built giant heads (Moai), decimated its environment, and caused its own collapse (what Diamond calls Ecocide). Having just read this post, about a people that successfully journeyed across the Pacific, this idea of ecocide should give you pause. How and why did they suddenly lose the ability to adapt and survive on Rapa Nui, when no such case appears elsewhere.

Long story short, they did not. Archaeology directly contradicts this hypothesis. I recommend reading the chapter on Rapa Nui in “After Collapse” if you want a more detailed history. Instead, the archaeology supports the fairly late colonization of Rapa Nui (circa 1200’s), followed by a series of challenges (changing soil conditions, the introduction of rats, deforestation, etc) which people were able to adapt to. However, what they could not anticipate, nor survive, was the arrival of Europeans (the Dutch in 1722, French in 1768, Spanish in 1770, James Cook in 1774…). With the conquest and the slave trade, the population dropped from 4,000 (pre-1772) to less than 1100 by 1877. A typical, yet sad, story of European conquest and colonization.

The takeaway: Polynesia is home to an estimated 1,000+ islands. The peoples who inhabit this region are not all the same; rather, Polynesia has numerous cultures and several different languages and dialects. What does unite Polynesia is a shared history of wayfinding and a remarkable journey across the Pacific long before the Western World. Likewise, many of the islands share food traditions, such as an emphasis on seafood, fresh fruits, yams, and pigs.

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Recipes from Polynesia

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Sources / Recommended Reading

• Argonauts of the Western Pacific
• The Past in Perspective: An Introduction to Human Prehistory by Kenneth L. Feder
• Wayfinders on PBS
• Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia by Christina Thompson