climate and geography: Europe 227 Polynesia and the Pacific Ocean The South Pacific Ocean has large numbers of relatively small islands of volcanic origin, their climate tropical and prevailing vegetation thick forests Because of the islands’ isolation, the number of species of plants and animals that migrated to them from mainland Asia is quite small Consequently, large numbers of new species developed on each island Most South Pacific islands are within a few hundred or at most a few thousands miles of the Indonesian archipelago or Australia The deep-ocean archipelagos nearest New Guinea (Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa) were occupied by colonists from that island in antiquity Those settlers developed into the Polynesian culture remarkable for its great seafaring tradition In the early Middle Ages they began to sail farther from the mainland and colonized more-distant areas They reached the Hawaiian Islands by about 400 c.e and New Zealand (by far the largest Polynesian island) off the southeast coast of Australia in about 1000 The millennium also began with the Polynesians reaching Easter Island across the greater part of the Pacific, only about 2,300 miles from South America The presence of South American sweet potatoes in Polynesian agriculture and of Asian chickens at some pre-Columbian archaeological sites in South America has been variously interpreted by scholars Some researchers view these foreign resources as evidence that Polynesian explorers reached as far as South America, even if there is no archaeological evidence for permanent settlements Other researchers provide compelling evidence that exotic plants and animals can migrate long distances across the Pacific without human intervention, owing to natural rafting in the strong currents and storms typical of the region The Polynesians never developed a metallurgical technology for agriculture or warfare, owing to the lack of metal resources on the islands, and the ready availability of wood and other perishable resources eliminated pottery from their technological repertoire on all but a few western Polynesian islands, which has caused some early scholars to view them as technologically “primitive” or “backward.” This negative assessment by early scholars was rationalized through the idea that living in a so-called paradise without the need for struggle against nature made Polynesian culture stagnant, in contrast to areas like eastern China, where adverse climates and the difficulties involved in agriculture spurred rapid technological growth However, in the Hawaiian archipelago and in some other areas of the Pacific, societies developed very sophisticated irrigation systems and artificial fishponds to massproduce the staples of their diet (root crops and fish) and to support high population levels In the realm of a technology that was vital to Polynesian culture—navigation—Polynesians were by no means backward compared with other medieval cultures They were the only sailors in the world who routinely ventured far out of sight of land Moreover, the Pacific Islanders were not immune to the problems of overpopulation and environmental degradation that plagued medieval populations elsewhere in the world While it is true that initially low population densities and abundant resources on newly discovered islands previously unexploited by humans might well confer initial benefits of a wide range of resources, better health, longer lives, and higher birthrates with lower infant mortality However, as populations grew and technological limits for intensified food production were reached, many Polynesian island populations faced significant pressures in the form of overpopulation and environmental degradation by the few centuries prior to European contact On some islands, agricultural land tended to be worked past its sustainable limits to meet the demand for food This led to deforestation as more and more land was brought under cultivation and to other forms of agricultural degradation, making it even harder to meet the needs of an expanding population on a limited amount of land On some islands, like the Hawaiian Islands, this crisis was met with the development of ever more efficient means of irrigation agriculture that managed to keep up with both explosive population growth and the increasing demands of aristocratic chiefs for feasting foods, and looming disaster was averted up until European contact In other island chiefdoms it led to terrible massacres and civil wars over the available food supply whose casualties (and sometimes cannibalism) drastically reduced the demand for food The most dramatic example of the latter kind of disaster was the near depopulation of Easter Island around 1600 c.e as several chiefdoms battled over dwindling land and resources, destroying the medieval culture that had made the world famous Easter Island statues So, in fact, Polynesian culture was under geographic and climatic pressure as severe as in China or anywhere else in the world Europe by Tom Streissguth and Bradley Skeen The majority of people in medieval Europe would have lived and died within a few miles of their birth places and would have had more familiarity with the exotic foreign lands mentioned in the Bible than with their own continent Travel in medieval Europe was dangerous, and many people were tied by bonds of family and feudal obligations to the homes where they lived The geographical learning of the Roman Empire was mostly lost in western Europe, though it began to be recovered from contact with Islamic culture in Spain in the 12th century The exploration undertaken for commercial