What's the REAL reason Polynesians didn't colonise Australia?

vgh...

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Seriously, what's the real reason Polynesians were never able to colonise Australia? I don't think a climatic argument or a geographical one makes any sense. If you can cross the Pacific, you can cross the Tasman. The Kermadec Islands and Norfolk Island had Polynesian presence. Since it's overwhelmingly likely Polynesians reached South America even, I find it extremely unlikely that they didn't at least land in Australia a few times and then bail.

Climate doesn't make sense either, since the East Coast of Australia is reasonably wet and is subtropical from Wollongong up. Unlike New Zealand where things like Taro only really grow in the far north, Australia has a decently-sized stretch of truly tropical and wet coast in today's North Queensland (look at Mackay, Yeppoon or Tully) that's known for cane farming today (good enough soil). I don't see why Polynesians couldn't bring their entire agricultural package here if they wanted to. The locals, while very primitive by Eurasian standards, were boating around and trading baubles, so if anything Polynesian innovations would've actually been useful in that landscape.

Why didn't Polynesians ever set up shop there or leave any detectable influence? The only reason I can think of is that they tended to have small founding population sizes and only really colonised places that were already uncolonised (so, all of Polynesia). Maybe the aborigines would have overwhelmed any Polynesian attempts at settlement because of this. But even then, why did Polynesians not seem to have actually historically bothered with Australia and left a tiny amount of influence/evidence? Nothing is really stopping them from coming and trying. If they had even left pigs or rats here it would have been very noticeable.
 
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Umbral

It was already colonized. Competing with an entrenched and already adapted population is vastly harder than colonizing virgin territory.
 

AlanL

Umbral said:
It was already colonized. Competing with an entrenched and already adapted population is vastly harder than colonizing virgin territory.
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But they already encountered, and admixed with, already settled local populations in the Philippines, New Guinea and the Bismarcks/Solomons before they headed further east.
 

Gloss

Umbral said:
Interesting. Indonesia should be quite hard to take too. Is there anything I can read about it?
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Indonesia was likely Austro-Asiatic and had local farming for at least a few centuries before the Austronesian came, this can be seen in the genes of Indonesians which are mostly Austro-Asiatic unluke mostly Austronesian Philippinos(the indigenous people in the Philippines were not farming)
 
ramones1986

ramones1986

Gloss said:
Indonesia was likely Austro-Asiatic and had local farming for at least a few centuries before the Austronesian came, this can be seen in the genes of Indonesians which are mostly Austro-Asiatic unluke mostly Austronesian Philippinos(the indigenous people in the Philippines were not farming)
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More specifically the western part
 

Polish Eagle

Might the Great Barrier Reef be a partial explanation?

Also, keep in mind that the Polynesian expansion reached New Zealand very late—14th century. They might have simply not gotten around to sailing west by the time Cook showed up.
 

twovultures

Donor
The wind and currents in the Pacific at the time, as well as the exploration traditions of the Polynesians, tended to favor a west-east pattern of exploration. Turning west to Australia would see them working against the wind in a way that could make return voyages to their home islands unsafe.

An Australia with an Austronesian-style agriculture is fun to imagine, though!
 

lynxpt

Gloss said:
Indonesia was likely Austro-Asiatic and had local farming for at least a few centuries before the Austronesian came, this can be seen in the genes of Indonesians which are mostly Austro-Asiatic unluke mostly Austronesian Philippinos(the indigenous people in the Philippines were not farming)
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Are you sure about this? The more recent timelines make an Austro-Asiatic presence in Indonesia chronologically tight. Either way, such a presence must have been limited to Sumatra, Java and Borneo.
 

Gloss

lynxpt said:
Are you sure about this? The more recent timelines make an Austro-Asiatic presence in Indonesia chronologically tight. Either way, such a presence must have been limited to Sumatra, Java and Borneo.
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Genetics alone prove that, there is Austroasiatic ancestry in the western half of Indoneisa but not East, the pattern cannot arise without a pre-Austronesian Austro-Asiatic migration.
41467_2014_Article_BFncomms5689_Fig2_HTML.jpg

I know roughly the timeline of how Austroasiatic spread but I'm less sure about Austronesian and when it started expanding.
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

Gloss said:
Genetics alone prove that, there is Austroasiatic ancestry in the western half of Indoneisa but not East, the pattern cannot arise without a pre-Austronesian Austro-Asiatic migration.
41467_2014_Article_BFncomms5689_Fig2_HTML.jpg

I know roughly the timeline of how Austroasiatic spread but I'm less sure about Austronesian and when it started expanding.
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Filipinos in the Lowands do have Austro Asiatic Ancestry but that is from migration from groups from Borneo and Sumatra where there is intermingling with Austroasiatics.
 
kasumigenx

kasumigenx

Gloss said:
Do you have a source for that?
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The common DNA between Lowland Philippines, Madagascar, and Borneo is the reason why DNA test kits from Madagascar, Borneo, and Lowland Philippines tend to overlap and Borneo is also where the Austro-Asiatic Ancestry comes from

This is an example of a DNA test where there is a Bornean ancestry and they said it is related to Mlabri, but the Mlabri-related ancestry here came from Borneo, they did not test the Bornean population here.

The Dayak ancestry of Filipinos only happened later in the Iron Age and Sri Vijaya.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

From the Cover: Multiple migrations to the Philippines during the last 50,000 years

A key link to understand human history in Island Southeast Asia is the Philippine archipelago and its poorly investigated genetic diversity. We analyzed the most comprehensive set of population-genomic data for the Philippines: 1,028 individuals covering ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
 
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Jared

Gloss said:
Austronesians in general took over more densely populated land in Indonesia though.
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Austronesians aren't specifically Polynesians, though. Austronesians are a broader group who migrated in different ways in different time periods.

In terms of Polynesians specifically, it helps to remember that Polynesians (and their navigational package) developed somewhere in Island Melanesia (east of New Guinea through to New Caledonia, opinions differ from where). After that... they mostly went east.

There could be reasons there regarding prevailing winds and other factors - I'm not sure of all the details - but just because they were near to a region, doesn't mean that they reached it or colonised it immediately. There were Polynesians in New Caledonia relatively early (some say as early as 1100 BCE, certainly by 200 CE), and that's relatively close to New Zealand, which was uninhabited at the time. But Polynesians did not settle New Zealand from New Caledonia, despite being close. The Polynesians who settled New Zealand came a lot later (around 1300 CE, give or take), and they came over from somewhere in the region of Tahiti or the Cook Islands, not New Caledonia.

Even the Kermadecs or Norfolk Island, which were closer to New Caledonia than New Zealand was, didn't get settled from New Caledonia, but as offshoots of the Polynesians who came to New Zealand.

If they had any contact with Australia, it was certainly sporadic. The Polynesians in the Pacific managed to colonise every flyspeck island in the Pacific, more or less. But while they did reach Norfolk Island and had a short-lived colonisation there, as far as we can tell they didn't reach Lord Howe Island at all, despite it being pretty much in the path they would need to sail to reach Australia from New Zealand. They could of course miss such an island - it's not large - on an occasional voyage if there was one, but if there was regular contact across the Tasman, I'd expect that there would have been at least an abortive settlement of Lord Howe Island.

So, there isn't any particular requirement that the Polynesians would have much contact with Australia in the first place. And even if they did, Polynesians (unlike some other Austronesians) did not do much if anything in the way of colonising already inhabited lands. They had contact in some form with South America, but did not end up colonising there. Even having some level of contact with Australia wouldn't give them much advantage in colonising an already-inhabited continent.
 

Gloss

Jared said:
Austronesians aren't specifically Polynesians, though. Austronesians are a broader group who migrated in different ways in different time periods.

In terms of Polynesians specifically, it helps to remember that Polynesians (and their navigational package) developed somewhere in Island Melanesia (east of New Guinea through to New Caledonia, opinions differ from where). After that... they mostly went east.

There could be reasons there regarding prevailing winds and other factors - I'm not sure of all the details - but just because they were near to a region, doesn't mean that they reached it or colonised it immediately. There were Polynesians in New Caledonia relatively early (some say as early as 1100 BCE, certainly by 200 CE), and that's relatively close to New Zealand, which was uninhabited at the time. But Polynesians did not settle New Zealand from New Caledonia, despite being close. The Polynesians who settled New Zealand came a lot later (around 1300 CE, give or take), and they came over from somewhere in the region of Tahiti or the Cook Islands, not New Caledonia.

Even the Kermadecs or Norfolk Island, which were closer to New Caledonia than New Zealand was, didn't get settled from New Caledonia, but as offshoots of the Polynesians who came to New Zealand.

If they had any contact with Australia, it was certainly sporadic. The Polynesians in the Pacific managed to colonise every flyspeck island in the Pacific, more or less. But while they did reach Norfolk Island and had a short-lived colonisation there, as far as we can tell they didn't reach Lord Howe Island at all, despite it being pretty much in the path they would need to sail to reach Australia from New Zealand. They could of course miss such an island - it's not large - on an occasional voyage if there was one, but if there was regular contact across the Tasman, I'd expect that there would have been at least an abortive settlement of Lord Howe Island.

So, there isn't any particular requirement that the Polynesians would have much contact with Australia in the first place. And even if they did, Polynesians (unlike some other Austronesians) did not do much if anything in the way of colonising already inhabited lands. They had contact in some form with South America, but did not end up colonising there. Even having some level of contact with Australia wouldn't give them much advantage in colonising an already-inhabited continent.
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I don't think it matters that they weren't Polynesians, any generic argument that uses historical patterns to justify a belief that something AH-related is possible or not can't be "immune" to someone using similar historical patterns or events, the argument wasn't even specific to Polynesians so I'm not sure why what I point out was so irrelevant given it's the closest pertinent example for Polynesians.

Anyway, it seems to me that distance was the biggest barrier. Also something interest, Vanuatu was first settled by Polynesians but over time it became mor Papuan genetically:

www.shh.mpg.de

Ancient DNA Reveals Genetic Replacement Despite Language Continuity in the South Pacific

www.shh.mpg.de www.shh.mpg.de

This could be a signal that maybe Polynesians would have difficulty competing with Papuans in the island but ideally someone that actually knows about the crop package and subsistence strategy of both groups could make a better analysis.
 
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