Asia Pacific Initiative » Formation of the Pacific Community

Course Outline

2010-01-22

This module examines the original migration path from South East Asia to Fiji and Samoa and its vicinity and further expanding to the triangle surrounded by Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand.
Eileen L. Shea, et al., Preparing for a Changing Climate, The Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change, A Report of the Pacific Islands Regional Assessment Team for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, East West Center, 2001.
Migration from the Asian continent also filled Micronesia, apparently including Okinawa.
This is the root of the common heritage in the Pacific.
Inflow of people from the Asian continent to the Pacific reached

map_year

map_s

“The three major peoples within the Pacific consist of Micronesians, Melanesians and Polynesians. These terms are derived from the Greek: Micronesia (small islands), Melanesia (black islands) and Polynesia (many islands).”
“Of these, the world of Polynesia lies within the vast triangle stretching from Hawaii in the north, to New Zealand in the south and Easter island in the east. To the west of Polynesia lies Melanesia and to the north west, Micronesia.”

Source: The World of the Maori, D. M. Stafford, 1996, reprinted 2004.

vo_maps

canoe
Source: Rayawa, “Fijian Canoes”, DomoDomo, a Scholarly Journal of the Fiji Museum, 2001

canoe_p
National Maritime Museum, Auckland, New Zealand

w_o

D. M. Stafford, The World of Maori, 1996, reprint 2004.
John Terrell, “Lapita as History and Culture Hero”, Ocean Culture History, Essays in Honour of Roger Green, New Zealand Journal of Archaeology Special Edition, 1996.
Sela Vuinakasa Rayawa, “Fijian Canoes”, DomoDomo, A Scholarly Journal of the Fiji Museum, Vol.13, No.1, 2001.
Ben Finney, Voyage of Rediscovery, University of California Press, 1994.
Ben Finney, “Putting Voyaging Back into Polynesian Prehistory”, Ocean Culture History, Essays in Honour of Roger Green, New Zealand Journal of Archaeology Special Edition, 1996.
Ben Finney, Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors, Reviving Polynesian Voyaging, Bishop Museum Press, 2003.
David Lewis, We the Navigators, the Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, Second Edition, 1994.
Patrick D. Nunn, Oceanic Islands, Blackwell, 1994.