Human Migration: into the pacific

When European explorers first ventured into the Pacific Ocean they were surprised to find that even some of the most remote islands were already occupied by thriving societies. The existence of these Pacific people provided them with a mystery which has in some ways persisted to this day. How had a people who lacked any physical navigational instruments or even metals, preceded them into the Pacific by thousands of years? Thinkers of the time suggested that they must be the remnants of some simple people, blown of course by chance or dragged there by currents. If you look at the space allotted to Pacific people in history curriculum around the world today, I'm afraid you would probably find a similar story, if you found them at all. I set out to find a little more about the people of the Pacific, specifically a part of the answer to the question of how they got there. What I found out was that far from a chance occurrence, the peopling of the Pacific was a result of a giant technological leap, one that represented a massive change in the pattern of human migration. Our story of human migration begins less than 100,000 years ago, when homo sapiens, the ancestors of all modern humankind, evolved in Africa and began to move into Central Asia. Some headed West into Europe and others traveled around the perimeter of India and into Southeast Asia, eventually making their way into the archipelagos of Malaysia, Indonesia, New Guinea, and even Australia. All of this progress was made in small stretches over thousands of generations. It was also done on foot or in simple rafts that could only make very short journeys.

These early humans were able to make it all the way to Australia because in the last ice age water trapped in the polar ice caps lowered sea levels. The Indonesian islands were actually joined to Eurasia. New Guinea, Australia and Tasmania were also all joined in one land mass, which was far more accessible from Southeast Asia. Today we find evidence that people reached Australia as early as 40,000 years ago, but there progress was checked there. No other large land masses would be reached by humans for another 20,000 years.

The next major event in human migration occurred when people crossed a similar land-bridge connecting Asia to the Americas, along the Berring strait. There is some debate over whether this was a result of hunters following game on land or traveling along the coast in small crafts, or both. In either case it didn't represent a shift in technology, and the places on earth that required a true ocean passage, like the Pacific islands, remained devoid of human life.

Around ten thousand years ago, with the end of the ice age, sea levels rose again, isolating the archipelagos of the Philippines, Indonesia and New Guinea. Australia became detached from New Guinea and Tasmania, and these populations remained relatively isolated for thousands of years. Still, the Pacific and its countless islands remained beyond human reach.

Then around 6,000 years ago, for the first time in human history, a people escaped the confines of landmasses that could only be reached by foot or simple craft. They pushed of from the mainland of South East Asia and and made their way eastward into the Pacific and a world where no human had proceeded them. Eventually they reached as far east as Easter Island, likely the coast of south America, and astonishingly as far west as Madagascar.

The accounts of their individual journeys are not recorded in journals or captains logs as they were in later European voyages of discovery, but this does not detract from their achievements in terms of the seamanship that they required. These voyages spanned more than half the globe and took place at a time when Europeans had not ventured beyond the Mediterranian or the coast of their continent.

What made these first voyages possible was the invention of the sail and the "outrigger", an extension which stabilized their dugout canoes. However, as the gaps between islands grew from tens of miles at the edge of the western Pacific to hundreds of miles along the way to Polynesia, and then to thousands of miles in the case of voyages to Hawaii and the Eastern Pacific, these oceanic colonizers developed huge double-hulled vessels, capable of carrying large groups, as well as all the supplies they would require to colonize new lands.

For long voyages such as these Pacific peoples used a large double-hulled canoe made of two large canoes connected by lashed crossbeams. The two hulls gave the craft stability, and the central platform laid over the crossbeams provided the needed working, living, and storage space. Large sails made of matting allowed it to move swiftly through the seas, and long steering paddles enabled Pacific mariners to keep it sailing on course. A medium-size voyaging canoe, 50 to 60 feet long, could accommodate two dozen people for a month long voyage.

As they moved farther and farther away from the familiar flora and fauna of Southeast Asia and New Guinea, they also had to develop a portable agricultural system which would enable them to survive in the nutrient low environments they would encounter. Ethno-botonists today have determined that these early Pacific mariners must have travelend in intentional colonizing parties, bringing Pigs, dogs, rats, and fowls, as well as cultivated plants such as bananas, breadfruit, taro, yam, gourds, and sugar cane, into the Pacific Islands. All of these made ecosystems of the pacific livable, and turned them into the "natural paradise" that Europeans would encounter centuries later.

Recently computer simulations have also suggested that because of prevailing winds and currents, many of the inhabited islands of the pacific could only have been reached as a result of careful and intentional voyages of exploration. When looked at in conjuncture with the highly sophisticated systems of navigation still practiced in some parts of the Pacific, it becomes clear that these trips were deliberate colonizations. Armed only with a knowledge of the movements of the stars, the ability to read the signs from the ocean itself, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs, the people of the pacific set out to explore and settle the most widespread and far removed regions of the earth.

This is an image of the earth taken from space. From this perspective you can really get the magnatude of the Pacific Ocean and an appreciation for the people who first explored it.

It's worth mentioning that the famous captain Cook, who mapped and explored so much of the pacific ocean for the European world, did so with a native Tahitian navigator on board. He and his officers made efforts to learn the Tahitian language, so that they would be able to communicate with Tupaia, who accompanied them for their voyage through the Pacific, and all the way back to England. From his diary it is clear that Cook was amazed by the polynesians ability to travel between distant points and across empty seas. He described Polynesia as "by far the most extensive nation upon earth."