That's 3 very different peoples with very different cultures and lifestyles. Outcomes don't have to be the same. Besides unlike those two the Polynesian expansion doesn't seem to have been a constant migration but looks more like various great pulses of movement every couple hundred of centuries.
What's the REAL reason Polynesians didn't colonise Australia?
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twovultures
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Key word there is "two millenia". That is a very long time, and the Bantu spread thinly initially-some of the latest research suggests that they leapfrogged from one preferred environment to another, only expanding into the spaces between them as their population grew and they acquired new crops (such as bananas) to help them colonize environments that were previously more marginal for them.
The rising and the falling of the sea controlled who and when Australasia was colonised.
Polynesian colonisation was controlled by sea currents, local overpopulation and the human need to see what is over the horizon….
Bantu colonising again was driven by different factors entirely from the first two waves of migration (not up on it enough to comment)
Not discounting the effects of earlier waves of migration and counter migration from other human species and sub-species which would have changed the dynamic again.
That is, I think personally the Polynesian migrations were not the first time humanity of one form or another crossed the pacific!
Polynesian colonisation was controlled by sea currents, local overpopulation and the human need to see what is over the horizon….
Bantu colonising again was driven by different factors entirely from the first two waves of migration (not up on it enough to comment)
Not discounting the effects of earlier waves of migration and counter migration from other human species and sub-species which would have changed the dynamic again.
That is, I think personally the Polynesian migrations were not the first time humanity of one form or another crossed the pacific!
Same issue I had in a prior discussion on this thread, if someone makes a general statement you don't get to hide behind implicit unsubstantiated claims about the Polynesians.
Polynesians also colonized New Zealand which had a completely different climate.
The Bantu expansion took a rainforest route
Early Bantu speakers crossed through the dense Central African Rainforest 4,000 years ago
www.mpg.de
This is why it had generally been accepted that these populations migrated through the Sangha River Interval - a savanna corridor that opened as a north-south strip along the rainforest around 2,500 years ago – and not directly through the rainforest. This study’s findings fit with recent anthropological results demonstrating the adaptability of humans to tropical forests. "Our results highlight the importance of niche construction in human population expansions. Of course ecology matters, but it isn't destiny," concludes Russell Gray, senior author of the publication."
Though I must say Bayesian philogenetic analysis applied on language could be considered utterly worthless garbage according to some, which I do somewhat agree with.Same issue I had in a prior discussion on this thread, if someone makes a general statement you don't get to hide behind implicit unsubstantiated claims about the Polynesians.
Polynesians also colonized New Zealand which had a completely different climate.
"It was previously thought that for a human group characterized by its agricultural practices, such as the early Bantu populations, it would have been hard, if not impossible, to cross the Central African rainforest. "The idea was that the dense rainforest made it very difficult to transport and maintain the crops and cattle that characterized the Bantu expansion. While changes in type of subsistence are attested in history, they tend to be relatively rare," comments Damián Blasi, one of the article's co-authors.The Bantu expansion took a rainforest route
Early Bantu speakers crossed through the dense Central African Rainforest 4,000 years ago
This is why it had generally been accepted that these populations migrated through the Sangha River Interval - a savanna corridor that opened as a north-south strip along the rainforest around 2,500 years ago – and not directly through the rainforest. This study’s findings fit with recent anthropological results demonstrating the adaptability of humans to tropical forests. "Our results highlight the importance of niche construction in human population expansions. Of course ecology matters, but it isn't destiny," concludes Russell Gray, senior author of the publication."
If you have archeological model of the spread of Bantu farming maybe they agree with the "bypassing rainforest" idea.
Hello! I'm Maori and from New Zealand, and wanted to say that while we did colonise both major islands, one notices that the South Island was much less populated. One of the major reasons I have heard for this being the cold weather and a lack of available food. This is why the locations of southern population centres tended to remain stagnant even as new populations moved in. Given this "picky" history of settlement, I wouldn't be surprised if there were instances of my ancestors or cousins sailing to Australia and just deciding it's not very worth it.
Not a historian or anything, but I have asked the same question and the answer seemed intuitive.
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Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm no expert on maritime navigation), but human migration by sea before the advent of things like engines was essentially at the whims of the winds and currents. Looking at maps of ocean currents and prevailing winds, you can see that Australia is in a bit of a disadvantageous position to be discovered by anyone coming from around Southeast Asia.
And it seems like the area that would be most difficult to reach would be exactly the area of Australia best suited to colonization, the east coast. So even if Polynesians did make it to Australia, they likely would have ended up landing somewhere that's not super conducive to actually settling there.
And it seems like the area that would be most difficult to reach would be exactly the area of Australia best suited to colonization, the east coast. So even if Polynesians did make it to Australia, they likely would have ended up landing somewhere that's not super conducive to actually settling there.
South Island is quite mountainous too, I'd say 51% of South Island is mountainous vs 32% of North Island(or 20 vs 2% using a more strict definition.
Anyway yeah depending on the exact population of pre-colonial South Island(20k? 40k?) it wouldn't have much higher density than places like Tasmania or Australia as a whole(maybe as much or double the density) though admittedly all of New Zealand would have had 5-10 the density and that might be considered a lot given that's roughly the population growth Europe experienced from 6000 to 3000 BCE with the introduction of farming.
Though I personally reject the idea that the existence of temporary settlements that didn't go nowhere means anything, this is the same thinking that leads people to just claim that Norse people could never settle Newfoundland based on basically anecdotes of contact with natives.
The expansion of agriculture doesn't happen through planned cost-benefit analysis, it happens probalistically as small groups try their luck and some of them find success and others don't, what leads agriculturalist to succeed in the long term is the ability to outgrow hunter-gatherers.
The main barrier for Polynesians is likely the distance(also because Melanesians lived in New Caledonia and Fiji not Polynesians)
Looking at this you'd think it would be the easiest for Polynesians to settle westward from Tongo given the currents pushes them there.Correct me if I'm wrong (I'm no expert on maritime navigation), but human migration by sea before the advent of things like engines was essentially at the whims of the winds and currents. Looking at maps of ocean currents and prevailing winds, you can see that Australia is in a bit of a disadvantageous position to be discovered by anyone coming from around Southeast Asia.
And it seems like the area that would be most difficult to reach would be exactly the area of Australia best suited to colonization, the east coast. So even if Polynesians did make it to Australia, they likely would have ended up landing somewhere that's not super conducive to actually settling there.
Austronesians did trade the ancestors of Dingo and New Guinean Singing Dog with the Aboriginals of Papua and Australia.
twovultures
Donor
That’s the thing, though. Polynesians typically sailed *against* winds and currents when voyaging, so that these elements would be in their favor when they sailed home. Being able to get back home quickly, before their supplies ran out, was an important security practice for Polynesian explorers.
twovultures
Donor
I thought I'd recheck some of my old research on this topic, and see where you could conceivably have Austronesians settle Australia ('Oz'tronesians!)
Based on a website for commercial banana agriculture, it looks like Lakeland in Queensland is about as far north as you could have an Oztronesian agricultural package[1]. North of that, it seems, the soil is just too infertile to work for agriculture-ruling out permanent settlement by the Austronesians who sailed to western Indonesia. Going south, based on the southern limit of where one can grow the staple crop of yams in Australia, you could have Oztronesians as far south as Sidney [2]-well over hundred miles of where I put their southern agricultural frontier in my timeline on the subject. Guess I underestimated them! I think they could, in theory, expand even further south if they got sweet potatoes somehow, but that would involve them continuing *very* long distance trade over multiple millennia with Polynesia, which seems unlikely.
That's a pretty wide region that their agriculture could work, but hitting that region is difficult. I've already gone over how sailing with the wind to Australia is contrary to their practice for voyaging; while it's possible to farm on the Australian east coast, any Polynesians would probably look for very specific bits of land-access to deepwater to hunt dolphins and fish tuna (bit of a problem with the Great Barrier reef), reliable fresh water, defensible, etc. Even if they find land that matches their specifications, they will probably have to fight Aboriginal peoples to settle there, and its just easier for them to sail east and settle uninhabited islands.
Still a fun idea though. Someone should revisit it.
[1]https://abgc.org.au/our-industry/
[2]https://stellinamarfa.com/vegetables/can-you-get-yams-in-australia/
[EDIT] I forgot that you can grow Austronesian crops in northern Australia, though with everything I've read about the region I don't think you can necessarily scale it enough to really make agriculture worth it.
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The alternative is for the Austronesians to marry the Aboriginals and assimilate them.
Taro grows natively in the Kimberley and in all parts of northern Australia, other varieties of it grow as a weed. So it's probably plenty viable as a crop when combined with an economy based on fishing and trade with Aboriginals--probably the classic "trade surplus agriculture for hunted animals".
There is also Rote Island, which is a fairly arid island less than 500 km northwest of the Kimberley and directly adjacent to Timor. It should have been possible for the Austronesians who settled in that area to reach the Kimberley and settle there. Directly between the two are the Ashmore and Cartier Islands which have evidence of centuries of fishing by Indonesians. On the larger Ashmore Island (it is an atoll with about 1 km2 of land), agriculture seems possible and it could probably support a few hundred people (access to freshwater might be the limit, like on many atolls).
In addition to another place for farming, Australia itself has pearls and trade with Aboriginals to offer. Perhaps the pelts of kangaroos or small exotic animals might be a niche trade item in Indonesia? It certainly adds something for Rote to trade given the island was and is rather poor.
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The notion of Melanesians and Polynesians being definable separate groups is projection of European racial science onto interrelated groups, especially as by and large the Western Polynesian islands closer to the Solomon and New Calendonian islands are mostly mixed with “Polynesian” and “Melanesian” languages largely intermingling while maintaining shared ancestral roots.
Captain Cook and Tupaea made contact with chiefs on both the North and South Island. When asked about the land of their grandfather’s they mentioned Rimaroa. Ulimaloa is one of the older names for New Caledonia that was mistakenly applied to Australia by a Swedish cartographer. In Māori oral histories there was also a relatively consistent contact with Tahiti, the Cook Islands and Western Polynesia over 25 year cycles when trade winds switched with the Coriolis effect.
As was mentioned, Australia may well have been visited, but ancestral Pacifican colonization practice had particular methodologies that they carried out. Smaller islands off larger islands were picked first with nursery crops carefully cultivated to see what would grow well. If there was no hostile locals transplanting of crops would occur so as to guarantee food, while maintaining the smaller island until they were absolutely sure they wouldn’t have to run away on their ships.
The Ahuahu/Mercury Islands are recognised as one such base for early colonization of Aotearoa New Zealand, the early Taro and Kumara cultivations highlighting the above.
I’m not too familiar with Australian climate or coastal geography, but I think it already has been mentioned that wind patters and ocean currents may not have been the best for landing anywhere to set up camp and or feasible early settlement.
There's considerable evidence that the northward expansion of cultures like the LBK stopped periodically for centuries at a time due to cold weather conditions and the time it took with primitive breeding techniques to get varieties of staple grain crops up to scratch. They didn't just burst in through everything as soon as the Neolithic started.
Sure but that applies to most migrations, it's not about people being picky is about people needing time to adapt to new environments, which is indeed what likely also happened with Polynesians.
Polynesians is definitely well defined groups, given Polynesians speak a subset of the Austronesians languages in the region and coincidentally also have the least amount of Papuan-like ancestry and influence, Melanesian is a less defined catch-all group but the people labelled as such do share a lot of Papuan ancestry while either speaking non-Polynesian Austronesian languages or "Papuan" languages with Fiji being the intermediate zone sharing traits of both groups.
It's not a projection of anything, it's just that European racial science simplified things down to race and lacked the exact knowledge of what happened which we know have and which doesn't make either of the 2 words meaningless.
My understanding is that Maori have only minor Melanesian ancestry.
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Slow shift in climate zones, going from Greece to Denmark is a pretty radical shift in climate going from Greece to Italy to Germany to Denmark is far more minor climatic shift. We can also see this with the Anatolian crop packet is radical different in Denmark versus Anatolia, in Anatolia rye and oats as example were weeds, while in Denmark it was the main crops. It was weeds which mimicked wheat better and better to survive until they became crops (Vavilovian mimicry) in their own right.
They aren’t meaningless. I’ve never ever claimed that they are meaningless. But they are projections of European race science that have become normalised labels. They do not acknowledge the shared histories and cultures of “Melanesian” and “Polynesian” cultures as they were often studied in isolation to each other or as a comparative lens to determine the superiority or inferiority of the other based on race.
As far New Caledonia and further west there are interconnected vocabularies that hint at those ancestral root connections in the same way there is variation across all the Polynesian islands as Founder effect maintained cultural artefacts from successive departures and settlements.
Indeed. It was not many chiefs that made those connections, just those on the West Coast of the South and Far North. Tupaea claimed that Māori stellar navigational expertise was the most degraded of the interactions he had had with other Pacifican groups, but the core theory was still there. Most return trips carry on to the 25 years preceding Cook’s arrival.