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In the South Pacific, the easternmost oceanic island with any human inhabitation was Easter Island, settled by the Polynesian Rapa Nui people. [13] Oceanic islands beyond that which neighbor Central America and South America ( Galápagos , Revillagigedo , Juan Fernández Islands etc.) are among the last inhabitable places on earth to have been ...
The Polynesian spread of colonization of the Pacific throughout the so-called Polynesian Triangle. Polynesians, including Samoans, Tongans, Niueans, Cook Islands Māori, Tahitian Mā'ohi, Hawaiian Māoli, Marquesans, and New Zealand Māori, are a subset of the Austronesian peoples.
The people of Rotuma have many common Polynesian traits, but speak a non-Polynesian language. Some of the Lau Islands to the southeast of Fiji have strong historic and cultural links with Tonga. However, in essence, Polynesia remains a cultural term referring to one of the three parts of Oceania (the others being Melanesia and Micronesia ).
Anthropologists believe that all Polynesians have descended from a South Pacific proto-culture created by an Austronesian (Malayo-Polynesian) people that had migrated from Southeast Asia. The seven main Polynesian cultures are Aotearoa, Hawaiʻi, Rapa Nui, Marquesas, Samoa, Tahiti, and Tonga.
Oceania is generally considered the least decolonized region in the world. In his 1993 book France and the South Pacific since 1940, Robert Aldrich commented: . With the ending of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, the Northern Mariana Islands became a 'commonwealth' of the United States, and the new republics of the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia signed ...
The umbrella term Pacific Islands has taken on several meanings. [1] Sometimes it is used to refer only to the islands defined as lying within Oceania. [2] [3] [4] At other times, it is used to refer to the islands of the Pacific Ocean that were previously colonized by the British, French, Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, or Japanese, or by the United States.
The Polynesian Triangle is a geographical region of the Pacific Ocean with Hawaii (Hawaiʻi) (1), New Zealand (Aotearoa) (2) and Easter Island (Rapa Nui) (3) at its corners, but excluding Fiji on its western side. At the center is Tahiti (5), with Samoa (4) to the west.
Tiki Makiʻi Tauʻa Pepe (foreground) and Tiki Manuiotaa (background) from the meʻae Iʻipona on Hiva Oa in the Marquesas Islands. Polynesian mythology encompasses the oral traditions of the people of Polynesia (a grouping of Central and South Pacific Ocean island archipelagos in the Polynesian Triangle) together with those of the scattered cultures known as the Polynesian outliers.