migration and population movements: Asia and the Pacific 673 Pacific Basin Migrations The widely scattered islands of the Pacific basin, stretching from New Guinea eastward across the Pacific Ocean, were populated by seagoing people with initial roots in Southeast Asia Having migrated from mainland Southeast Asia sometime before 10,000 b.c.e., some Polynesian maritime sojourners left New Guinea around 1500 b.c.e and settled in the Solomon Island chain and then the Banks, Vanuatu, and Samoan archipelagos In roughly 400 c.e Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga had special roles as the strategic points for the next wave of Polynesian voyages of migration, as these are mentioned in local traditions as the points of origin These Polynesians navigated the Pacific in double-outrigger canoes Their boats consisted of two hulls connected with lashed crossbeams and covered with a central platform Although it was referred to as a canoe, the vessel was driven by wind and used sails made of natural-fiber matting The two hulls gave the craft stability and resiliency in the open ocean and the capacity to transport people and supplies over long distances A medium-size boat 50 to 60 feet long could carry two dozen people and their belongings, including plants and animals, such as chickens, pigs, and goats, to introduce on the new islands they settled Over time settlers from diverse points and mixtures of cultures and languages arrived Local legends emphasize their movements, their heroic voyages of discovery, their observations of such natural signs as the stars and ocean currents, and their mixed cultural heritage to become a unique Polynesian island culture rather than the transplant of an Asiaderived heritage The name Polynesian came to represent the shared cultural heritage of the islands and does not imply a geographic or political unity Polynesian cultural traditions also distinguish Polynesians from neighboring populations in the Pacific island regions of Micronesia and Melanesia, who derived from different Southeast Asian points of origin in the ancient era Current knowledge of the initial voyages of migration to and settlement in Hawaii comes from a mix of oral tradition and archaeological discovery Scholars debate whether the original Polynesian voyagers arrived from the Marquesas Islands, Tahiti, or both, from about 500 to 600 One theory attributes the Marquesas as the original source and argues that the Tahitian settlers did not arrive until 1300 as a second-wave migration In both the “one-migration” and “twomigration” theories, there was not a single settlement voyage but a continuous series of migratory voyages that populated the Hawaiian Islands Local folk tradition attributes the initial voyages to the legendary Hawai’i Loa, the chief of a band of voyaging fishermen who discovered the island of Hawaii, which was named after the chief, and then the island of Maui, which was named for his son The initial band of voyagers returned to their home island and then made a return voyage with Hawai’i Loa’s wife and children, for whom the other Hawaiian Islands were named They mixed with the other male voyagers to originate the Hawaiian race Known by its native population as Aotearoa (“land of the long white cloud”), New Zealand was the last Pacific island region settled by migrating Polynesians known as Maori between the mid-12th and the 14th centuries The Maori traveled there by boat from islands, possibly the Society Islands, in eastern Polynesia This is considered the Hawaiki, or “homeland,” in local legend These voyages of settlement were led by the legendary Whatonga and his grandfather Tai They followed an initial 10th-century contact by traveling in double-outrigger canoes (waka hourua) led by the adventurer Kupe from Hawaiki According to Maori legend, he found what he named Aotearoa uninhabited by “people of land” (tangata whenua) The discoveries of archaeologists confirm the potential truth in these legends, since the earliest evidence of settlement is an early 10thcentury Maori settlement in the Bay of Islands and gardening at Urimatao, on Motura Island, but then an absence of settlement until later Sometime later Te Awa populations arrived and settled the Dargaville area on the North Island’s western coast, from which they moved farther to the south, where they built other fortified villages (pa) at Rawhiti and Manawaora The final migrating voyagers, called the Ngare Raumati, landed in the Bay of Islands area in the later 14th century, where they intermarried with the earlier settlers By the time the first Europeans arrived in the late 16th century about percent of the Maori population lived on the South Island, while most Maori lived on the tropical North Island’s northern coastline Tibeto-Burman, Thai, and Lao Migrations from S outhern C hina In response to the migrations of other ethnic groups from the central Asian steppes into the southern China region, during the medieval era populations migrated from the Himalaya foothills into the hills and lowlands of Southeast Asia Among these were the Burmese, who by the second millennium had become the dominant ethnicity in Myanmar; the Thai, including one group who occupied the fertile rice plain of the Chao Phraya River in modern-day Thailand in the 11th century and who are still known by the Thai name today, and others who migrated into the hill regions of Myanmar’s north, where they became known as Shans and Karens; and the Lao, who migrated into the hill regions east of the Mekong River between Thailand and Vietnam