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The sweet potato, which is of South American origin, is widely cultivated in Polynesia. This suggests that some interaction between the Polynesians and the indigenous peoples of South America may have taken place. [11] No Polynesian crops were introduced into the Americas, and there is possible evidence of Polynesian contact only in Chile. [12]
Polynesians are an ethnolinguistic group comprising closely related ethnic groups native to Polynesia, which encompasses the islands within the Polynesian Triangle in the Pacific Ocean. They trace their early prehistoric origins to Island Southeast Asia and are part of the larger Austronesian ethnolinguistic group, with an Urheimat in Taiwan .
Like the other islands of the archipelago, Fatu Iva was originally populated by Polynesians, who probably came from Western Polynesia. Rivalries between the different valleys were frequent. In one of them, around the middle of the 19th century, the Anainoapa tribe of Hanavave and the Tiu of Omoa confronted each other.
The date when Polynesians first settled the island of Maui is uncertain. Early archaeological studies suggested that they came in multiple gradual waves, the earliest possibly from the Marquesas sometime before 450 AD., and the most recent from Tahiti sometime after 700 AD.
As spiritual powers were perceived by Hawaiians to imbue all of nature, experts in many fields of work were known as kahuna, a term commonly understood to mean priest. [31] The various types of kahuna passed on knowledge of their profession, be it in "genealogies, or mele , or herb medicine, or canoe building, or land boundaries", [ 32 ] etc ...
Individuals who were ungodly, godless, irreligious, wicked, unbelieving, or careless of observance of taboos, were known as ʻaiā. [23] [24] However, the dominant religion as in many other Polynesian societies, was the kapu/taboo religion. It had a theology, ritual, and a code of conduct. [25]
The first European known to have sighted the island was Captain James Cook, in 1774, on his second voyage to the South Pacific on HMS Resolution. He named it after the Duchess of Norfolk (c. 1712 – 1773). The Duchess was dead at the time of the island's sighting by Cook, but Cook had set out from England in 1772 and could not have known of ...
The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived between 50,000 and 30,000 years ago, when Neanderthals still roamed Europe. [7] The original inhabitants of the group of islands now named Melanesia were likely the ancestors of the present-day Papuan-speaking people.