The colonization of Polynesia which ranges from Hawaii in the north, to Easter Islands in the east, Fiji in the west, and New Zealand in the south, is still a matter of debate.
The Indigenous Māori people constitute the largest Polynesian population, followed by Samoans, Native Hawaiians, Tahitians, Tongans, and Cook Islands Māori. The human settlement of the Pacific Islands represents one of the most recent migration events of mankind. Based on linguistic, archaeological, and genetic evidence, it is believed that the Polynesians descended from an ancient seafaring people who migrated from Southeast Asia. This migration is thought to have occurred around 3,000 to 1,000 BCE. The Polynesians developed impressive navigation skills and used the stars, currents, and other natural phenomena to traverse vast distances across the Pacific Ocean. The Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl believed that people from South America could have reached Polynesia during pre-Columbian times. His Kon-Tiki expedition showed, by using only the materials and technologies available to those people at the time, that such a trip was possible.
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