In this video we’ll be shifting our attention to the Pacific Ocean, to a geographic region
that’s known as Oceania.
Oceania is made up of thousands of islands in the Pacific Ocean and divided into four
distinct culture groupings.
Oceania includes Australasia; Melanesia; Polynesia; and Micronesia.
These cultural groupings share a common history in their connected trading networks, and oftentimes
a common language family.
The most commonly accepted theory is that people first came to the islands of Oceania
from Southeast Asia in two distinct waves.
The first wave included the indigenous Australians and Papuans, who were made up of the first
group of migrants out of Africa more than seventy-thousand years ago.
They settled in the islands of Australia and New Guinea around forty- or fifty-thousand
years ago, and were joined by a second wave of migrants – called the Lapita people – from
the island of Taiwan between 3000 and 1000 BCE.
The Lapita people moved from Southeast Asia through the Philippines on to New Guinea in
Melanesia and then on to the Micronesian and Polynesian islands further north and east.
For the purposes of this video, we’ll focus on the regions of Melanesia, Polynesia, and
Micronesia – beginning with Melanesia.
Melanesia refers to a group of islands from New Guinea to Fiji.
The western islands of Melanesia were most likely populated around forty-thousand years
ago by a group known as the Papuans.
The Papuans were likely part of the first group of Homo sapiens to migrate out of Africa
about seventy-thousand years ago.
They spread along the southern coast of Asia before finally settling into the islands in
Southeast Asia and then moving into New Guinea, while it was still connected by a land bridge
to Australia.
The eastern islands of Melanesia were populated much later, probably around 4000 t0 3000 BCE.
They would come into contact with the Polynesian – or Lapita travelers as they began to migrate
about a millennium later.
Thus, traditional Melanesian culture is defined by two primary influences – the Papuans
and the Lapita – and this culture reflects the traditions of both, oftentimes defined
by geography, so that you see more influence in the western islands of Melanesia, more
influence of the Papuans and more influence of the Lapita or Polynesian people in the
eastern islands of Melanesia.
To the east of Melanesia are the islands of Polynesia.
This subset of Oceania is often referred to as the Polynesian Triangle because it’s
bounded by Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the southwest, and Easter Island in the
southeast – and the Polynesia Triangle is huge.
It occupies about a third of the earth’s surface, about 99.5 percent of that surface
area is water.
The islands of Polynesia are – in many cases – thousands of miles apart.
Hawaii, for example, is more than two-thousand miles from its nearest land neighbor, which
suggests to us that the Lapita people who populated the islands of Polynesia were an
incredibly advanced seafaring people.
As they moved across the Pacific, from southeast Asia to Melanesia and then on to Polynesia,
each stage of their migration required advances in seafaring – or what they called wayfinding
ability, and technology.
The islands of Southeast Asia, Melanesia, and Australasia are relatively close together
– being separated by a few hundred miles in the most extreme cases.
But the Polynesian islands are hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of miles apart.
So the ability to sail the Pacific Ocean, meaning that these people had to lose sight
of the coastline and sail for days – and in some cases weeks – before seeing land
again, required advances in technology, like this double-hulled canoe associated with the
Polynesian people.
The largest of these double-hulled canoes could carry up to three-hundred people or
hundreds of pounds in supplies for long-distance travel.
They also, the Polynesian people also demonstrated advances in navigation using the stars and
other natural clues – like wind; waves; the flight patterns of birds; and oral traditions
to create a remarkably accurate navigation system.
Navigation and the navigator responsible for it were held in very high esteem by the Polynesian
people.
Their skills allowed Polynesians to spread rapidly throughout Oceania colonizing islands
throughout the Pacific Ocean and spreading their language; belief systems; and social
and cultural practices throughout Oceania.
To the north and west of Polynesia is a territory known as Micronesia.
Micronesia was settled by the same Lapita people who moved through Southeast Asia and
Melanesia, and would spread this culture throughout the islands further to the north and east,
thus Micronesian culture displays many of the same characteristics of Melanesia and
Polynesia.
So the complex interplay of these cultures – Melanesian; Micronesian; and Polynesian
– would continue to define the Pacific world for millennia, at least until the arrival
of the Europeans.
In the 16th century, Europeans came to the Pacific from the east.
In 1520, a Spanish explorer named Ferdinand Magellan found a route around the southern
tip of South America – now called the Strait of Magellan – that connected the Atlantic
and Pacific Oceans.
From 1527 to 1595, multiple Spanish expeditions crossed the Pacific Ocean and opened the Pacific
islands to Spanish exploration and conquest.
Much of Polynesia was claimed for Spain as a territory known as the Spanish East Indies.
The Spanish East Indies were administered from the viceroyalty of Mexico City and this
allowed Spain to create an extensive trading network between the west coast of the Americas
and the islands of the Pacific.
This introduced Spanish influence – things like Catholicism; integration into the Columbian
Exchange; and the introduction of new crops; animals; and diseases – and the introduction
of Spanish cultural influences – in the realm of language; art; architecture; and
cuisine – that would change the Polynesian cultures in the Pacific islands.
The Spanish would be followed by other European powers in the 17th and 18th centuries, establishing
ties between the Atlantic world and the Pacific world into a New World system that was defined
largely by European hegemony.
Thank you.