Polynesia

Description

Polynesia is generally defined as the islands within the Polynesian Triangle although this does not cover the geographic spread and settlement of Polynesian people across a greater area. Geographically, and oversimply, the Polynesian Triangle may be seen with its corners at Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island. The other main island groups located within the Polynesian triangle are Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Niue, Wallis and Futuna and French Polynesia. There are also small outlier Polynesian enclaves in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, The Caroline Islands, and in Vanuatu. An island group with strong Polynesian cultural affinities outside of this great triangle is Rotuma situated north of the Fijian islands; the people of Rotuma have an apparently Polynesian phenotype but speak a non-Polynesian language. Some of the Lau Islands to Fiji's southeast have strong historic amd cultural links with Tonga. However, in essence, Polynesia is an anthropological term referring to one of the three parts of Oceania (the others being Micronesia and Melanesia) whose pre-colonial population generally belongs to one ethno-cultural family as a result of centuries of maritime migrations.