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Tupaia's chart of Polynesia within 3200km of Ra'iatea. 1769, preserved in the British Museum. On his first voyage of Pacific exploration, Captain James Cook had the services of a Polynesian navigator, Tupaia, who drew a chart of the islands within a 2,000 miles (3,200 km) radius (to the north and west) of his home island of Ra'iatea. [40]
Early Polynesian explorers reached nearly all Pacific islands by 1200 CE, followed by Asian navigation in Southeast Asia and the West Pacific.During the Middle Ages, Muslim traders linked the Middle East and East Africa to the Asian Pacific coasts, reaching southern China and much of the Malay Archipelago.
Hawaiʻi is the northernmost vertex of the Polynesian Triangle, a region of the Pacific Ocean anchored by three island groups: Hawaiʻi, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and Aotearoa (New Zealand). The many island cultures within the Polynesian Triangle share similar languages derived from a proto-Malayo-Polynesian language used in Southeast Asia ...
Polynesian navigators (19 P) Pages in category "Polynesian explorers of the Pacific" The following 5 pages are in this category, out of 5 total.
The sweet potato, a food crop native to the Americas, was widespread in Polynesia by the time European explorers first reached the Pacific. Sweet potato has been radiocarbon-dated to 1000 CE in the Cook Islands. Current thinking is that it was brought to central Polynesia c. 700 CE and spread across Polynesia from there. [20]
Tupaia (also spelled Tupaea or Tupia; c. 1725 – 20 December 1770) was a Tahitian Polynesian navigator and arioi (a kind of priest), originally from the island of Ra'iatea in the Pacific Islands group known to Europeans as the Society Islands.
The Kon-Tiki expedition was a 1947 journey by raft across the Pacific Ocean from South America to the Polynesian islands, led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl. The raft was named Kon-Tiki after the Inca god Viracocha, for whom "Kon-Tiki" was said to be an old name.
[37] [38] The area of Tonga, Fiji, and Samoa served as a gateway into the rest of the Pacific region now known as Polynesia. [39] Ancient Tongan mythologies, as recorded by early European explorers, report the islands of 'Ata and Tongatapu as the first islands hauled to the surface from the deep ocean by Maui. [40] [41]