Polynesia
Polynesia (from Greek, "many islands") is a large grouping of over 1000 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:
Polynesian languages 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 Japan, through Indonesia up to but not including the Marquesas Islands. Because of strong parallels with Christian cultures, it readily adopted Christianity.
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 almost like chiefs, and each island maintained a house of navigation, with a boat-building area.
History
The spread of pottery and domesticates in Polynesia is connected with the Lapita-culture.
See also Polynesian mythology
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