Polynesian culture
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Polynesian culture is the culture of the indigenous peoples of Polynesia who share common traits in language, customs and society. The development of Polynesian culture is typically divided into four different historical eras:
- Exploration and settlement (c. 1800 BC – c. AD 700)
- Development in isolation (c. 700 – 1595)
- European encounter and colonization until World War II (1595–1946)
- Post-World War II period
History
Origins, exploration and settlement (c. 1800 BC – c. 700 AD)
Maternal
Between about 2000 and 1000 BC speakers of
The Proto-Polynesians who find their origins in Maritime Southeast Asia were an adventurous seafaring people with highly developed navigation skills. They perfected their seafaring and boat-craft techniques as each successive generations "island-hopped", starting from the island of Taiwan through the Philippine and Indonesian archipelagos and west to the Marianas, finally dispersing throughout the Pacific Ocean. They colonised previously unsettled islands by making very long canoe voyages, in some cases against the prevailing winds and tides.
A published, apparently pre-Columbian, Chilean specimen and six pre-European Polynesian specimens also cluster with the same European/Indian subcontinental/Southeast Asian sequences, providing no support for a Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America. In contrast, sequences from two archaeological sites on Easter Island group with an uncommon haplogroup from Indonesia, Japan, and China and may represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal. Modeling of the potential marine carbon contribution to the Chilean archaeological specimen casts further doubt on claims for pre-Columbian chickens, and definitive proof will require further analyses of ancient DNA sequences and radiocarbon and stable isotope data from archaeological excavations within both Chile and Polynesia.[5]
The cultivation before western exploration by many Polynesian cultures of the sweet potato, a South American plant, is also evidence for contact. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated in the Cook Islands to 1000 AD, and current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia around 700 AD, possibly by Polynesians who had traveled to South America and back, and spread across Polynesia to Hawaii and New Zealand from there.[6][7]
Development in isolation: (c. 700 to 1595)
While the early Polynesians were skilled navigators, most evidence indicates that their primary exploratory motivation was to ease the demands of burgeoning populations. Polynesian mythology does not speak of explorers bent on conquest of new territories, but rather of heroic discoverers of new lands for the benefit of those who voyaged with them.
While further influxes of immigrants from other Polynesian islands sometimes augmented the growth and development of the local population, for the most part, each island or island group's culture developed in isolation. There was no widespread inter-island group communication, nor is there much indication during this period of any interest in such communications, at least not for economic reasons. However, almost all these isolated colonies originating from Maritime Southeast Asia still retained the strong influence of their ancestral culture. These are very obvious in social hierarchies, language, and technology which point to a common source with the
During the period following complete settlement of Polynesia, each local population developed politically in diverse ways, from fully developed kingdoms in some islands and island groups, to constantly warring tribes or extended family groups between various sections of islands, or in some cases, even within the same valleys on various islands.
While it is likely that population pressures caused tensions between various groups, the primary force that seems to have driven unity or division among tribes and family groups is geophysical: on
Meanwhile, on most
European contact and colonization, until World War II (1595 to 1945)
The first Polynesian islands visited by European explorers were the Marquesas Islands, first discovered by Europeans when the Spanish navigator, Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, found the islands in 1595.
Because of the paucity of
Following the initial European contacts with Polynesia, a great number of changes occurred within Polynesian culture, mostly as a result of colonization by European powers, the introduction of a large number of alien diseases to which the Polynesians had no immunity, slaving ventures to supply plantations in South America, and an influx of Christian missionaries.
By the early 20th century, almost all of Polynesia was colonized or occupied to various degrees by Western colonial powers, as follows:
- Chile
- France
- Germany
- the United Kingdom
- Niue
- the Cook Islands
- New Zealand
- Tokelau
- Tuvalu (as the "Ellice Islands")
- Pitcairnand its associated islands
- United States
- American Samoa
- Hawaii
- most of the Line Islands
- most of the Phoenix Islands
All of the Polynesian outliers were subsumed into the sometimes-overlapping territorial claims of Japan, the United Kingdom and France.
During World War II, a number of Polynesian islands played critical roles. The critical attack that brought the United States into the war was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in south-central Oahu, Hawaii.
A number of islands were developed by the Allies as military bases, especially by the American forces, including as far east as Bora Bora.
Post 1945
Following World War II, political change came more slowly to the islands of Polynesia than to the other parts of overseas colonies of European powers. Although sovereignty was granted by royal proclamation to New Zealand as early as 1907, this did not fully come into effect until 1947.
Following in independence were the nations (and the sovereign powers from which they obtained complete political independence) of:
- Samoa, as "Western Samoa" from New Zealand in 1962
- Tuvalu, from the United Kingdom in 1978
- The Republic of Kiribati, consisting of the Phoenix Islands and most of the Line Islands, from the United Kingdom in 1979
- Niue, from New Zealand in 1974[8][9]
- Cook Islands, from New Zealand. It has been self-governing since 1965 and gained United Nations recognition in 1992
Tonga was never actually a colony, but a limited protectorate of the United Kingdom. Tonga never relinquished internal self-government, but when external foreign affairs were again decided by Tongans without reference to the United Kingdom in 1970, Tonga was said to have rejoined the Comity of Nations. Tonga is the only island group in the South Pacific that was never colonised by a European power.[citation needed]
The remaining islands are a part of, or under the sovereignty of other countries:
- Hawaii became a U.S. state in 1959
- American Samoa has been a territory of the United States since 1899
- French Polynesia was a territory of France from 1946 until 2003, when it became an Overseas Collectivity of France
- Pitcairnwas a British colony until 2002, when it was converted into a British Overseas Territory
- Tokelau was a British colony until 1926, when it became a territory of New Zealand
- Wallis and Futuna became an Overseas Collectivity of France in 2003
- Easter Island became a special territory of Chile in 2007
- Howland, Baker, Jarvis, and Palmyra Islands are each uninhabited territories of the United States
The various outliers lie in the sovereign territory of the nations of Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the French territory of New Caledonia. Hawaii became a state of the United States, giving it equal political status to the other 49 states.
Independence and increasing autonomy is not the only influence affecting modern Polynesian society. The primary driving forces are, in fact, the ever-increasing accessibility of the islands to outside influences, through improved air communications as well as through vastly improved telecommunications capabilities. The economic importance of tourism has also had a tremendous impact on the direction of the development of the various island societies. Accessibility of outside sources, as well as the tourism viability of individual islands, has played an important role to which the modern culture has adapted itself to accommodate the interests of outsiders, as opposed to the influences of those intent upon promoting the retention of native traditions. Because of this, Polynesia is today an area in varying degrees of extreme cultural flux.
Dance
The Polynesian
.Samoan dance
The traditional Samoan
Social structure
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Some researchers have characterised traditional Polynesian societies in general as theocratic.[11]
In Hawaii, Tahiti, and elsewhere, and especially if it was to one's advantage, descent could be traced through women (matrilineality). Thus, while descent through the male line was notionally preferred, in practice the descent system was often bilateral—traced through either or both parents.[14]
Religion / mythology
See also
References
- ^ For a discussion of the origins of Eastern Polynesians, particularly the Māori of New Zealand, see: Douglas G. Sutton, ed., The Origins of the First New Zealanders (Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland, 1994).
- ^ M. Kayser, S. Brauer, G. Weiss, P.A. Underhill, L. Roewer, W. Schiefenhövel, and M. Stoneking, "Melanesian origin of Polynesian Y chromosomes," Current Biology, vol. 10, no. 20, pages 1237–1246 (19 Oct. 2000). See also correction in: Current Biology, vol. 11, no. 2, pages 141–142 (23 Jan. 2001).
- ^ 20069298"Howe, K. R (2006). Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors - the discovery and settlement of the Pacific. Albany, Auckland: David Bateman. pp. 92–98.
- ^ David J. Lowe (2008). "Polynesian settlement of New Zealand and the impacts of volcanism on early Maori society: an update" (PDF). Retrieved 19 March 2022.
- ^ Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA. Jaime Gongora, Nicolas J. Rawlence, Victor A. Mobegi, Han Jianlin, Jose A. Alcalde, Jose T. Matus, Olivier Hanotte, Chris Moran, J. Austin, Sean Ulm, Atholl J. Anderson, Greger Larson and Alan Cooper, "Indo-European and Asian origins for Chilean and Pacific chickens revealed by mtDNA" PNAS July 29, 2008, vol. 105 no 30 [1]
- ^ VAN TILBURG, Jo Anne. 1994. Easter Island: Archaeology, Ecology and Culture. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press
- ^ "Gardening at the Edge: Documenting the Limits of Tropical Polynesian Kumara Horticulture in Southern New Zealand" Archived 2011-07-24 at the Wayback Machine, University of Canterbury
- ^ "Home". The Official Website Of Niue Tourism. Retrieved 6 April 2018.
- ^ "Niue". New Zealand Post Stamps. Retrieved 6 April 2018.
- ^ Samoan Sensation. http://www.samoa.co.uk/dance.html
- ^
ISBN 9780932813299. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
[...] the governmental machinery [of Easter Island] is theocratic like that of the larger Polynesian areas [...]
- ^
ISBN 9780520058989. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
By factoring out what is common throughout Polynesia from what is unique to each island society - on the assumption that shared elements were part of the original pattern - we can model some of the main features of early Polynesian society. [...] Hereditary chiefs and a pervasive system of ranking defined by genealogical position were central to early Polynesian society. [...] Those most directly descended from the founding ancestors, and ultimately the gods, were the group's highest ranking citizens, and ideally the senior male among them would be the politicoreligious chief of the community.
- ^
ISBN 9781107625693. Retrieved 10 February 2024.
As to the religious aspect of chieftainship, we have referred more than once to the beliefs in divine descent, the chiefs being the visible lineal descendants of the gods, whose exalted status was increased by that of their illustrious descendants. As regards the magical functions of chieftainship, it cannot be doubted that the traditional beliefs and practices associated with the sanctity of chiefs did very definitely reinforce their temporal power, and the special ceremonial surrounding their birth, inauguration and death served to give ritual expression to this principle and to draw on the supernatural for the validation of political authority.
- ^ "Matriarchal Studies- Pacfiic Islands". Matriarchal Studies. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 12 February 2024.
Further reading
- ISBN 978-0-915809-00-4.
External links
Media related to Culture of Polynesia at Wikimedia Commons