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Comment by lazyjones | Hacker News Reader

Polynesia is a group of islands spread over a large area, but only a few 100 Km apart from each other at most. Why is it so unthinkable that the native population spread slowly from Indonesia, Australia or New Guinea by exploring nearby islands and settling there?

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New Zealand/Aotearoa was settled by people from the Marquesas Islands, as was Hawaii. Hawaii is "1313 miles from Midway Island, 1337 miles to Christmas Island, and 2395 miles from San Francisco." to quote Quora.

The closest useful island to New Zealand is the Raoul Island in the Kermadecs (which was settled by Polynesians from New Zealand).

I encourage you to look at Google Maps and understand the scale of the Pacific. https://www.google.co.nz/maps/place/Marquesas+Islands,+Frenc...

> Hawaii is 1313 miles from Midway Island

Close-up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papahānaumokuākea_Marine_Natio...

Clearly easy to navigate due to many small islands / reefs.

> The closest useful island to New Zealand is the Raoul Island in the Kermadecs (which was settled by Polynesians from New Zealand).

980 Km distance or so, less than e.g. Iceland from the rest of Europe. Where is the mystery?

What I'd like to know is how these atolls and islands looked a few 1000 years ago, with lower sea levels (what is the rough estimate, 3 meters per millennium?).

Most of the small south Pacific islands were first settled in the past 1000-2000 years, and even some major ones like Hawaii and New Zealand. Sea levels haven't changed much at all in the past 3000 years. Certainly nothing approaching even one meter over that time.

...That's not at all in the direction of the Marquesas. Look south.

The current DNA evidence points to the aboriginal people of Taiwan as being the likely source of the original polynesians, likely they spread across the northern Pacific, as far as the Americas, then back again to New Zealand arriving around 900AD (the last major inhabitable place on earth to be discovered by humans)

The first settlers of Madagascar are also Austronesians, came from Borneo between 350 BC and 550 AD [1]. If you look at a world map you can see just how far those two islands are.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar

That Madagascar remained unsettled for so long is the most puzzling of all. It's not that far off from Africa, where humanity came from.

Speaking for myself as an African. We can run and jump but swimming is not our forte.

The out of Africa theory has been overblown by the media. There are many other bits of evidence that point to other origins...

If you read Wikipedia article

> The first archaeological evidence for human foraging on Madagascar may have occurred as much as 10,000 years ago.[10] Human settlement of Madagascar occurred between 350 BC and 550 AD by Austronesian peoples, arriving on outrigger canoes from Borneo

People lived in Madagascar 10 0000 years before arrival of proto-Malays.

The Aborigines of Australia migrated separately from the Austronesian people who colonized Indonesia, coastal New Guinea, the Philippines, Madagascar, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands.

Does this map reflect current research? https://images.theconversation.com/files/107932/original/ima...

I can't tell what article this map is associated with. But it appears to be a summary of when various places on earth were first settled by each homo. Australia was first settled by the Aborigines about 50k years ago, entering via Southeast Asia. Much later, New Zealand was first settled by the Maori 800 years ago, entering via Taiwan, Southeast Asia (after the Aborigines' ancestors), and the Pacific Islands, though these migrations aren't shown on this very simple map.

Recommended resource on the use of DNA to track migration patterns out of Africa:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Journey_of_Man

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