Anthropology & Stuff

Polynesia means Many Islands, and applies to most of the islands of the Pacific Ocean, all but one of which were inhabited by the Polynesian peoples (an Australoid-Mongoloid hybrid) before the arrival of Europeans.

Australoid and Mongoloid are two of the four major ethnic groups - the others being Caucasoid and Negroid (the people of the Indian sub-continent are considered an Australoid-Caucasoid hybrid, while the San 'Bushmen' of southern Africa do not belong to any of these groups).

Australoid originated in South East Asia and migrated into Australia during the Ice Age, when glaciers mounted up across Eurasia and North America caused the world's sea levels to drop by 300 metres, joining Siberia to Alaska (through which the ancestors of Native Americans wandered), and creating a sub-continent of Malaysia/Indonesia which was separated from Australia/Papua New Guinea only by the narrowest of straits. These man was able to cross, with his dog (ancestor of the dingo), to hunt the innumerable species of marsupial abundant in what were, in the Ice Age, the teeming grasslands of Australasia.

Mongoloid pressed down into South East Asia, there hybridising with Australoid and producing a variety of offshoots. Among the first were the ancestors of the Melanesian. Predominantly Australoid, they migrated out into the islands of the South West Pacific. It seems they never progressed beyond Fiji, an archipelago which obviously satisfied their needs.

They were followed several thousand years ago by the ancestors of the Polynesians. These were a fairly even Mongoloid-Australoid hybrid, using Mongoloid agricultural techniques and speaking an Austronesian language.

Australoid-Mongoloid also migrated west, and were the first inhabitants of Madagascar.

Those who headed east appear to have bypassed Fiji and settled the neighbouring islands of Samoa and Tonga around two thousand years ago.

Within 300 years the Polynesians had progressed as far as the Tahitian archipelago. Here they developed a highly-stratified, religious society. They pioneered the giant double-hulled canoes, which could carry scores of men hundreds of kilometres a day.

They later settled Hawaii over 2000kms to the North (there remains a point in Hawaii named, in Polynesian, the Path to Bora Bora, northermost island of the Tahitian archipelago), Rarotonga (the Cook Islands) in the West and Rapa Nui (Easter Island) in the East.

It is possible they reached South America, as they were in possession of American crops in pre-European times and called some of them by similar names to the American natives (compare American 'cumer' to Polynesian 'Kumera' for the sweet potato). Contact with South America might also help to explain some of the strange myths of Rapa Nui, which refer to battles between Long Ears and Short Ears, and whose stone statues are reminiscent of the continent.

Around the eighth or ninth centuries the people of the Tahitian archipelago also managed to find New Zealand, a 4000km journey to the south-west.

According to popular legend, Kupe was the captain and Rangi was the high priest aboard the first canoe to reach New Zealand's shores. It is believed the arrivals spied the snow-capped peaks of the mountains , thought they were looking at clouds and thus named the islands Aotearoa, Land of the Long White Cloud. The South Island was later named Te Wai Pounamu, the Big Canoe, and the North Island Te Ika a Maui, the Fish of Maui.

Polynesians in Africa? Vikings in America? Caucasians in Japan?

These are some of the historical oddities I have been researching on the internet:

"Polynesians" in Africa:

The prevalented theory is the first inhabitants of Madagascar were a Malayo-Polynesian speaking people of Austronesian, or mixed Austronesian-Negroid, ethnicity.

They are thought to have reached the giant African island in Biblical times, or shortly after, about when their ethnic kinsmen were travelling from Samoa and Tonga toward Tahiti.

Austroloid peoples originated in South East Asia and had been expanding into Australia and the Pacific since the Stone Age. They progressed as far as Fiji in the east. The Melanesian (black lands) are the islands inhabited by their descendants.

It seems there was a fresh wave of mixed Mongoloid-Austroloid migrations, beginning just a few thousand years ago, most probably as Mongoloid began to press down from North East Asia.

The migrations throughout the Pacific, as far as Hawaii, Tahiti, Easter Island and New Zealand are well-documented. It seems they may also have reached South America, without actually settling there, as South American crops featured in Pan-Polynesian trade routes of pre-European times.

Polynesia simply means 'many lands' and is the name given to the Austroloid-Mongoloid race which inhabited these islands.

Austroloid-Mongoloid also migrated west, along the southern coast of Asia and the east coast of Africa. Whether or not they mixed with African natives before their arrival in Madagascar remains a mystery. It is known that the Arabs introduced native Africans to the island after they began trading there in the seventh century AD.

Europeans did not discover Madagascar until eight years after Colombus had reached the Americas.

Diogo Dias of Portugal became the first Euorpean to sight the island in 1500. The French began trading there in the 17th century, then invaded in 1883, establishing a protectorate two years later.

The majority of the population remains of mixed Austronesian-Negroid ethnicity. The national language, Malagasy, is a member of the Malayo-Polynesian family. A caste system is active among the 18 ancient tribes of the island. The Merina are the largest among them.

In the early 19th century Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka united the Merina kingdom, a collection of Malayo-Austronesian speaking tribes in the highlands (they number about 3 million today). He went on to conquer most of the island. His successor Radama I signed a treaty with the British, outlawed slavery and admitted Christian missionaries.

He was followed by his widow, Queen Ranavalona I, who secured her place via the practice of fratricide, and ruled for 33 years. She prohibited Christianity, banished the missionaries, and engaged in a campaign of religious persecution leading to as many as 150,000 Christian deaths.

Ranavalona's heir, Radama II (son of Radama I), in turn, reversed many of her policies, signing treaties with the English and French and welcoming back the missionaries. He was assassinated in 1863, after just two years on the throne.

Queens Ranavalona II and III followed, before French victory brought an end to the Merina dynasty in 1897.

Madagascar did not regain full independence until 1960, 13 years after an unsuccessful uprising which claimed as many as 90,000 lives, all but 180 of them Malagasy. Thousands more had been sentenced to death or imprisonment.


"Vikings" were the first Europeans in America:

Although this became an established fact following the discovery of Norse ruins in Newfoundland in 1960, it is still not widely known that Europeans had reached the Americas half a millenia before Columbus, who arrived there half a millenia ago.

Leif Ericson, son of Eric the Red (a Norwegian outlaw banished to Iceland, from whence he discovered Greenland in the early 980s), sailed from Greenland around 1000AD in search of a land sighted by countryman Bjarni Herjolfsson when blown off course during a storm in 986.

Ericson first reached Baffin Island (Canada), which he named Helluland (land of the flat stones), then Markland (forest land), generally considered to have been Labrador.

The first "permanent" settlement was at the northern tip of New Foundland, which Ericson named Vinland (wine land). The ruins were uncovered by Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine in the 1950s, finally confirmed in 1960.

The colonization was not led by Ericson, however, but by his brother-in-law Thorfinn Karlsefni some years later. According to the Icelandic sagas, Karlsefni took 160 people with him, all but 15 of them men.

They survived there only a few years. Their demise remains a mystery. It may have come about as a result of conflict with the natives, though the sagas recount efforts on the part of the settlers to appease the local chiefs.

A Viking coin has been discovered in Maine, and a Scandanavian stone carving in Minnesota, but there is no concrete evidence the Norsemen ventured as far south as the modern-day United States. More likely these artefacts arrived there through trade, whether in pre-Columbıan times or later.

"Caucasians" in Japan?

Although I have, in the past, read accounts which describe the Ainu aboriginals of Japan as "Caucasoid," it now seems that theory has fallen by the wayside.

Genetic testing has shown the Ainu to be a Mongoloid people whose closest relatives are in Tibet and the Bengal Bay islands of Andaman. Neither were they the original inhabitants of Japan. Tribes of various ethnicity had been making their way into the islands since the Stone Age.

It seems the Ainu were one of a number of tribes which existed on the continent before the rise of the Chinese Han dynasty.

Attempts have been made to include the Ainu language in the macro-Altaic, which includes Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and Turkic. However, it is commonly accepted to be a "language isolate."

Slightly more far-fetched hypotheses endeavoured to link Ainu with Austronesian, and even the hypothetical macro-Euroasiatic language. The latter perhaps gave rise to the "Caucasoid" theory.

Taller and more athletic than the Japanese, people of predominantly Ainu stock number around 50,000 today. There are a further 100,000 Japanese with minor Ainu ancestry.

end

It was boring the first time...

Rowanbi wrote:

In the early 19th century Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka united the Merina kingdom,

end

Ah yes - good old Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka

I thought it was interesting enough.

Me too. Lots of cross pollination has been happening for a while.

Funny, I went to the spot on Rarotonga (not Tahiti) where they said the 'canoe' left for NZ. It was just a little rocky spit opposite some islands in the atoll. You could imagine them leaving from that point though. It made sense. It was near a gap into the ocean through the reef... then they simply had to swing a right and head towards the SW.

On the origins of the Japanese... and what part of Central/Northern Asia they migrated through.

I was on a flight back to Australia in the early 90s from Hungary, visiting relatives. The route was Frankfurt-Anchorage-Tokyo-Sydney.

Lots of Japanese on the flight from Frankfurt. On arrival in Anchorage, I then saw a few of the locals. The similarities bewteen some of the Alaskan natives and some of the Japanese was revealed to me. They looked closely related.

Then what struck me even more was the semblance to Hungarians.
It was early hours after a long flight... sort of tired. The Japanese looked similar to Hungarians in an oblique sort of way.
I often nearly mistook one for the other within a short space of time at the airport queuing up for customs and at the duty free store.
It was an uncanny experience.

However, it was not so much the exterior 'looks' but more of the facial expression or countenance that switched a little light on in my head  - if only for a split second - that these different groups of people were, in fact, more closely related that you would expect.

Also heard some time ago that the most prevalent Japanese blood type is similar to that in Hungary.

So maybe some hoards went west into Europe beyond the Urals (or originated from that part of Central Asia) ; some ventured east across the Bering St and all the way down to Chile or to Japan, whilst others went down the peninsula (to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia) or to the islands of the SW Pacific - towards Polynesia, Micronesia and Australia ... all merrily mixing along the way?

So we is all humans??????

That'll pleasantly surprise a few inhabitants who frequent these threads ... and positively shock others who'll need far more evidence before accepting that supposition as fact.

The Loaded Dog wrote:On the origins of the Japanese... and what part of Central/Northern Asia they migrated through.

I was on a flight back to Australia in the early 90s from Hungary, visiting relatives. The route was Frankfurt-Anchorage-Tokyo-Sydney.

Lots of Japanese on the flight from Frankfurt. On arrival in Anchorage, I then saw a few of the locals. The similarities bewteen some of the Alaskan natives and some of the Japanese was revealed to me. They looked closely related.

Then what struck me even more was the semblance to Hungarians.
It was early hours after a long flight... sort of tired. The Japanese looked similar to Hungarians in an oblique sort of way.
I often nearly mistook one for the other within a short space of time at the airport queuing up for customs and at the duty free store.
It was an uncanny experience.

However, it was not so much the exterior 'looks' but more of the facial expression or countenance that switched a little light on in my head  - if only for a split second - that these different groups of people were, in fact, more closely related that you would expect.

Also heard some time ago that the most prevalent Japanese blood type is similar to that in Hungary.

So maybe some hoards went west into Europe beyond the Urals (or originated from that part of Central Asia) ; some ventured east across the Bering St and all the way down to Chile or to Japan, whilst others went down the peninsula (to Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia) or to the islands of the SW Pacific - towards Polynesia, Micronesia and Australia ... all merrily mixing along the way?

Well, I've been to Hungary and they by and large looked Germanic to me - fair-haired and blue-eyed. But the original Huns were of course from Central Asia. & as a matter of fact genetic testing has just recently connected the Central Asian peoples to the Native Americans. For a long time linguists have been making the same connection. I once read a book which claimed the Turkic and Native American languages shared hundreds of words in common. So it appears that the migration into the Americas may have begun in the Altaic Mountains region of Central Asia. The Altaic language family includes Turkic, Mongolian, Korean and Japanese (but not Chinese, Finnish or Hungarian, though there is clearly a distant relationship). The Central Asians also differed from the original Eastern Asians in that they carried some minor Australoid component. In other words, there had been some degree of hybridization with the dark-skinned aboriginals of Southern and South East Asia. Basically, I think the original migrations into the Americas tens of thousands of years ago almost certainly preceded this. But the migrations did not end with the recession of the Ice Age and submersion of the land bridge. Indeed, they continued one way or another right up to the age of European discovery. & it appears that, at some point, "Turkic" peoples were among them.

Very interesting.

That also goes part of the way to explain the phonetic similarities bewteen some Indian language dialects with certain Australian aboriginal languages.

It struck me once whilst watching an aboriginal welcome ceremony to the travelling Indian cricket team in Perth - it sounded like a distinctive South Asian burst of words with lots of rolled "r"s, a similar sentence structure and some of those emphatic staccato-like 'ancient' guttural sounds.
There seemed to be a strong linguistic link there to me. At least to my ears anyway.

Yes, the original inhabitants of South Asia were Australoid. The Aryan invasions, presumably emanating from the Caucasus region of southern Russia, created a hybrid Australoid-Caucasoid (white) race. Iran is named after the Aryans, of course, while in India the caste hierarchial system is partly a legacy of this integration. Again, linguists had made the connection long before DNA testing, which is why we have the macro Indo-European language family (over half the world's population are among its speakers). Australoid also made their way down to Australia tens of thousands of years ago when sea levels were much lower and the continent was mostly grassland teeming with multiple varieties of marsupial - most of them long since gone extinct. Australia was never quite connected to Asia, however. It required a canoe to get there. That's why the animals remain distinctly different in Australia. The only animal transported to Australia appears to have been the dog - ancestor of the dingo. This despite the fact that trade (and presumably some population exchange) continued between the continent and PNG right up to modern times (white rule, borders and all that B/S). Polynesians, as mentioned earlier, are a hybrid Australoid-Mongoloid race, who began migrating out of South East Asia only a few thousand years ago, reaching Samoa in Biblical times (Savai'i island is probably the original Hawaiki of Polynesian mythology), and the Tahitian Archipelago about 3 centuries later (where Raiatea Island possibly became the new 'Hawaiki).'

A theory which appears to b growing in acceptance, judging by the number of times I have read it recently, as that the four major ethnic groups - Asiatic, Austroloid, Caucasian & Negroid - emerged partly due to hybridization with other varieties of ancient man. Neanderthal were prevalent in Europe for about 200,000 years, but within thirty or forty thousand years of modern man's arrival they disappeared. DNA testing suggests Europeans are around 2% Neanderthal. The theory is that, although we wiped them out, we also hybridized with them - though only to a relatively minor degree. Similarly, the recently discovered Denisovan man was prevalent in Asia, disappeared after modern man's arrival, and DNA testing shows that both Asiatic (incuding Native Americans) and Austroloid peoples (including South Asians) are as much as 5 or 6% Denisovan. Meanwhile, Negroid Africans did not hybridize with anyone. In this manner the four major ethnic groups are believed (by some experts) to have been formed.