Encyclopedia of society and culture in the medieval world (4 volume set) ( facts on file library of world history ) ( PDFDrive ) 254

climate and geography: Europe  227

Polynesia

and the

Pacific Ocean

The South Pacific Ocean has large numbers of relatively small
islands of volcanic origin, their climate tropical and prevailing vegetation thick forests. Because of the islands’ isolation,
the number of species of plants and animals that migrated
to them from mainland Asia is quite small. Consequently,
large numbers of new species developed on each island. Most
South Pacific islands are within a few hundred or at most a
few thousands miles of the Indonesian archipelago or Australia. The deep-ocean archipelagos nearest New Guinea (Fiji,
Tonga, and Samoa) were occupied by colonists from that island in antiquity. Those settlers developed into the Polynesian culture remarkable for its great seafaring tradition. In
the early Middle Ages they began to sail farther from the
mainland and colonized more-distant areas. They reached
the Hawaiian Islands by about 400 c.e. and New Zealand
(by far the largest Polynesian island) off the southeast coast
of Australia in about 1000. The millennium also began with
the Polynesians reaching Easter Island across the greater part
of the Pacific, only about 2,300 miles from South America.
The presence of South American sweet potatoes in Polynesian agriculture and of Asian chickens at some pre-Columbian archaeological sites in South America has been variously
interpreted by scholars. Some researchers view these foreign
resources as evidence that Polynesian explorers reached as far
as South America, even if there is no archaeological evidence
for permanent settlements. Other researchers provide compelling evidence that exotic plants and animals can migrate
long distances across the Pacific without human intervention,
owing to natural rafting in the strong currents and storms
typical of the region.

The Polynesians never developed a metallurgical technology for agriculture or warfare, owing to the lack of metal
resources on the islands, and the ready availability of wood
and other perishable resources eliminated pottery from their
technological repertoire on all but a few western Polynesian
islands, which has caused some early scholars to view them
as technologically “primitive” or “backward.” This negative
assessment by early scholars was rationalized through the
idea that living in a so-called paradise without the need for
struggle against nature made Polynesian culture stagnant, in
contrast to areas like eastern China, where adverse climates
and the difficulties involved in agriculture spurred rapid technological growth. However, in the Hawaiian archipelago and
in some other areas of the Pacific, societies developed very sophisticated irrigation systems and artificial fishponds to massproduce the staples of their diet (root crops and fish) and to
support high population levels. In the realm of a technology
that was vital to Polynesian culture—navigation—Polynesians

were by no means backward compared with other medieval
cultures. They were the only sailors in the world who routinely
ventured far out of sight of land.
Moreover, the Pacific Islanders were not immune to the
problems of overpopulation and environmental degradation
that plagued medieval populations elsewhere in the world.
While it is true that initially low population densities and
abundant resources on newly discovered islands previously
unexploited by humans might well confer initial benefits of a
wide range of resources, better health, longer lives, and higher
birthrates with lower infant mortality. However, as populations grew and technological limits for intensified food production were reached, many Polynesian island populations
faced significant pressures in the form of overpopulation and
environmental degradation by the few centuries prior to European contact. On some islands, agricultural land tended to
be worked past its sustainable limits to meet the demand for
food. This led to deforestation as more and more land was

brought under cultivation and to other forms of agricultural
degradation, making it even harder to meet the needs of an
expanding population on a limited amount of land. On some
islands, like the Hawaiian Islands, this crisis was met with the
development of ever more efficient means of irrigation agriculture that managed to keep up with both explosive population growth and the increasing demands of aristocratic chiefs
for feasting foods, and looming disaster was averted up until
European contact. In other island chiefdoms it led to terrible
massacres and civil wars over the available food supply whose
casualties (and sometimes cannibalism) drastically reduced
the demand for food. The most dramatic example of the latter
kind of disaster was the near depopulation of Easter Island
around 1600 c.e. as several chiefdoms battled over dwindling
land and resources, destroying the medieval culture that had
made the world famous Easter Island statues. So, in fact, Polynesian culture was under geographic and climatic pressure as
severe as in China or anywhere else in the world.

Europe

by

Tom Streissguth

and

Bradley Skeen

The majority of people in medieval Europe would have lived
and died within a few miles of their birth places and would
have had more familiarity with the exotic foreign lands mentioned in the Bible than with their own continent. Travel in
medieval Europe was dangerous, and many people were tied

by bonds of family and feudal obligations to the homes where
they lived. The geographical learning of the Roman Empire
was mostly lost in western Europe, though it began to be
recovered from contact with Islamic culture in Spain in the
12th century. The exploration undertaken for commercial