Polynesian Seafaring Culture

Paper Summary:

This paper defines and discusses this unique culture of sailing the oceans and examines the history of this practice. It explores how the skills and heritage of these seafaring people, that laid dormant for generations, is experiencing a revival amid the Polynesians of today, giving them pride and purpose in the ancient arts and culture of their ancestors.

From the Paper:

"The Pacific Ocean is the earth's largest geographic feature, occupying more than one third the surface of the globe, an area greater than all the landmasses put together. The some 25,000 islands, roughly 1.6 million square kilometers, are scattered about a sea area of more than 88 million square kilometers, stretching 16,000 kilometers along the equator and 15,000 kilometers from the Bering Strait to the Antarctic Circle (Kiste 1991). More than one half of the world's islands are found in the Pacific Ocean. These islands comprise an area known as Polynesia, which means "many islands," and is geographically the largest of the Pacific's cultural areas, with distances between the island groups the greatest (Kiste 1991). An imaginary triangle from Hawaii in the north to the southeast at Easter Island then to New Zealand in the southwest defines Polynesia. The Pacific Ocean is so vast that even with some 25,000 islands dotting its waters, the majority of the area is empty. In fact, if Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan, had missed Guam in 1521, he would have believed that there was no human inhabitants in the entire region (Kiste 1991). Today, "the combined exclusive economic zones of the countries in the region is approximately 30 million square kilometers, an area almost the size of Africa or three times the size of the continental United States" (Zurick 1995)."

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