Facts about Polynesia
Polynesia can be divided into two distinct cultural groups, East Polynesia and West Polynesia.
British navigator Captain James Cook was the first to attempt to explore Polynesia.
Many polytheistic religions include deities that share one or more features with the Nordic Thor.
Eastern Polynesian cultures reflect the smaller islands and atolls including the Cook Islands, Tahiti, the Tuamotus, the Marquesas Islands, Hawaii, and Easter Island.
Polynesian countries trade with their former and current colonial powers the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and France as well as Canada, and increasingly, Japan.
Polynesians, whose features are Mongoloid, are tall and have lighter skin than Micronesians or Melanesians.
Knowledge of the traditional Polynesian methods of navigation was largely lost after colonization by Europeans.
Eastern Polynesians adapted their culture to a non-tropical environment when they settled New Zealand.
Polynesians today are mostly Protestants of various groups, but with a large minority who are Roman Catholic.
Polynesia (from the Greek words meaning "many islands") is a large grouping of over one thousand islands scattered over the central and southern Pacific Ocean.
Late nineteenth century writers told of heroic Polynesians migrating in great coordinated fleets.
Of Hawaii's 1.2 million people, there are about 116,000 native Hawaiians or other Polynesians.
Pre-Christian Polynesians worshiped many gods, each of whom represented some aspect of their environment.
French Polynesia sends one voting member to each house of the French National Assembly in Paris.
Of New Zealand's four million people, about 260,000 identify themselves as Polynesian.
Polyploidy is a means by which the beginnings of new species are created in just two or three generations.
Adventurous seafarers by 700 C.E., the Polynesians had settled the vast Polynesian triangle.
Polynesia may be described as the islands within a triangle with its corners at Hawaiian Islands, New Zealand, and Easter Island.
Polynesia has a total population of just over six million, but the Polynesian population is estimated at about three million people spread over one thousand islands.
Evidence indicates that the Polynesians were motivated to expand to ease the demands of burgeoning populations.
Migration by Polynesian people in great ocean-going canoes is impressive considering that the islands settled are spread out over great distances—the Pacific Ocean covers nearly a half of Earth's surface area.
Settlements by the Polynesians were of two categories: the hamlet and the village.
Anthropologists term the Eastern Polynesian system of kinship the Hawaiian system.
After World War II, political change came more slowly to Polynesia than to the other overseas colonies.
Independence is not the only influence affecting modern Polynesian society.
The term "polytheism" is sometimes applied to a wide variety of religious traditions with a range of divergent theological stances.
Pre-colonial Polynesians also devised snares, traps, nets, harpoons, and special hooks that do not snag on reefs to catch fish.
French President Charles de Gaulle's 1966 visit to Djibouti was marked by public demonstrations by Somalis demanding independence.
Polynesian languages are all members of the family of Oceanic languages, a sub-branch of the Austronesian language family.
By the early 1900s, almost all of Polynesia and its outliers were colonized or occupied by Western colonial powers, or subsumed into the sometimes-overlapping territorial claims of Japan, the United Kingdom, and France.
In 1595, Manila was proclaimed as the capital of the Philippine Islands and became a center of trans-Pacific trade for more than three centuries.