polynesians

While migrating to New Zealand in the early 1300s, a significant Polynesian settler population (with animals) is blown south by a freak storm and gets caught in the powerful eastward winds of the roaring forties. They are carried to the Chilean coast of south America. Either unable or unwilling...

What if the Long Pause - the almost 2,000 year long break in Polynesian expansion - hadn't happened?

There is already speculation that the Polynesians made it to South America IOTL, and took the sweet potato with them from there. While such contact was likely transitory in nature, the evidence is strong enough that it's not considered a complete fringe theory anymore. This led me to ask another...

Let's say that the band of Paleo-Indians which were the first humans to reach the Americas all die in a snowstorm while crossing Beringia, leaving the New World/the Americas uninhabited until the Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut peoples migrate from Siberia on boats, the Vikings land in Vinland, and the...

The Polynesians stopped expanding for around 2,000 years, in a period known as the Long Pause. According to this article, it was because they didn't have the technology to sail against the wind, but I'm not sure how true that is. Assuming the inadequate technology theory is true, there's a...

While there's still some debate about whether the Polynesians beat Columbus to the Americas, what seems pretty clear is that even if they did achieve it, the mark they left wasn't particularly strong or long-lasting (with a handful of exceptions). Your challenge is to change that. Have the...

In a scenario where the Polynesians colonized Australia around the same time that New Zealand was colonized historically by the Polynesians (so around 1200-1300), what would a Polynesian Australia look like? How would Polynesians deal with the conditions of Australia (granted, they'd mostly stay...

What if contact between the Māori of New Zealand and tropical Polynesia never ended, using the Kermadec Islands as a stopover en route to the Cook Islands and Tahiti? How would European colonisation of New Zealand be affected with a Māori with a stronger maritime culture? Would pigs and chickens...

Rapa Nui from Easter Island succesfully settle the Galapágos Islands and the Juan Fernandez Islands, what happens? How does contact between the Native Americans of mainland South America and the Polynesians go? What happens when Europeans arrive? What are the Galapagos and Juan Fernandez...

So ignoring how they conquered it, Māori from New Zealand settle some coastal areas in Australia. By the time the Europeans arrive the coast from Melbourne to Sydney, Flinders Island, King Island and the northern coast of Tasmania (the rest remains almost unchanged) has been settled by Māori...