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Feb 282 min read

THE AUSTRONESIAN MIGRATIONS: WORDS AND WAYFINDING.




Connor Donaldson -

 

The word tangata (n. person, man) is used by the Māori of New Zealand, for example when they refer to themselves as tangata whenua (n. people of the land), an identical word also appears in Tongan, and in Samoan it changes only in spelling to become tagata. Linguistically speaking, these words are cognates (cousin words). Their ubiquity across the Pacific languages is evidence of a common historical link. We can even observe how these languages have evolved in the way these words vary between places , notably the differences of the word for person between kanaka in Hawai’ian and ta’ata in Tahiti. In some cases, the  resemblances can span thousands of kilometres. The Malagasy of Madagascar use the word maty (adj. dead), which is the same word as the mate used in the famous Māori haka: Ka Mate. Woven throughout these words is a common thread which connects the Pacific’s constellation of island peoples to a shared history.

Some 4000 years ago, a group of indigenous Taiwanese people crossed the South China Sea and came to settle the Philippines. These were the first ancestors of the Austronesians and their journey was the beginning of the Austronesian migrations. These mass movements of people across the ocean would populate the vast Pacific and give rise to its hundreds of unique cultures. Over the following 1000 years, Austronesian settlement would expand to South East Asia (Indonesia and Malaysia) and parts of the Pacific (Micronesia and Melanesia). 

The next 1000 years saw the arrival of Austronesians in Samoa and Tonga. As the largest and easternmost part of the Pacific island grouping this region took the longest to populate. Eventually, however, Austronesian seafarers reached Tahiti (700 AD), Hawai’i (900 AD) and finally New Zealand (1300 AD)- the last major landmass to be settled by humans. Meanwhile, Austronesians would also arrive as far west as Madagascar in 500 AD, where their settlement would give rise to the Malagasy people.

This shared history is also immortalised in the mythologies and lineages  of the Pacific peoples. For example, tales of the demigod Māui and his legendary exploits are told all across Polynesia, from Hawai’i to French Polynesia. Māori trace their whakapapa (n. family history) back to their waka (n. canoe), meaning the boat their ancestors first arrived in. 

During their long odysseys across the open ocean, the first peoples of the Pacific brought with them the words their descendants still speak today, each a different clue in reconstructing their common heritage.


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