The Spread of Civilization: Island Peoples – The World of Polynesians (1)

The island of Japan is very close to the center of mainland civilization, and their culture has been strongly influenced. Historians also know at what time humans migrated here and what happened next. Early immigrants from Asia crossed the vast Pacific Ocean and occupied many islands. Humanity's ability to adapt to difficult circumstances and the spirit of adventure in uncharted territory are often beyond the imagination of historians. In the Polynesian islands, such as Hawaii and New Zealand, people largely isolated from other humans created complex societies based on agricultural and maritime resources. The people of these archipelagos were not influenced by the centers of advanced civilization. But we don't know much about the situation of these people.

The distance from Southeast Asia through the Pacific Ocean to Central America is about 30,000 kilometers. There are thousands of islands scattered across the vast sea. The size of these islands varies greatly, ranging from rings of tiny coral reefs to huge islands of volcanoes and beautiful valleys; the largest of these is mainland Australia. Most of these islands are located in the tropics but this is not the case with our other familiar island, New Zealand. Although the inhabitants who crossed the ocean had different physical characteristics, languages and cultures, most of them were of Asian descent.

By about 1500 BC and 1000 BC, almost all major islands west of New Guinea had footprints of human activity. Historians have consistently referred to these people as Polynesians. These people have no written records. Historians have restored these peoples mainly through archaeological and linguistic evidence. Another means is to reconstruct the history of their society through various historical legends of the locals and the observations of Westerners at the time when they first came into contact with these inhabitants. Polynesians speak about 30 related languages, which belong to the Austronesian language family, and are also found in Indonesia and the Philippine Islands, as well as in Southeast Asia. Experts speculate that they are from Asia, but it is likely that these people were not the first immigrants to reach the Pacific islands. When they arrived here 4,000 years ago, the island already had dark-skinned peoples who spoke unrelated languages living in the area for a long time, such as Australia. Biologists are currently conducting relevant DNA research, and perhaps the results may provide historians with new perspectives.