Fata Ariu Levi wanted to know where he came from. Like many of us, he wanted to know how centuries of history had resulted in his family living in their community on the islands of Samoa. He wanted to know this not only for himself, but for his entire family. Levi has a special role. He serves as Taliaoa (orator chief) for the Fata Letunu Taliaoa Saena Poao family clan in the Polynesian villages of Afega and Tuana’I. In Samoa, the Taliaoa speaks on behalf of their family history. 

Levi’s task of uncovering the history of his family was made difficult by three challenges.

First, he and his family were among the original inhabitants of the Samoan Islands, which lie in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The settlement of Samoa and other Polynesian societies that stretch across the ocean was part of an epic story of migration that involved generations of Polynesians sailing from island to island, across thousands of miles of open ocean. It’s a story that began over 3,000 years ago.

Second, this long and complex history is full of mystery. The Pacific Ocean is vast, and its islands are quite small. It’s very hard for us to imagine how people with ancient technologies were able to safely navigate these distances across open water. They had no compasses or modern navigation tools. Their boats were built of wood, coconut husks, and woven leaves. And yet, these Polynesian explorers did sail the open ocean, finding and settling distant islands that no human had ever set foot on. As they moved, they also built routes of trade and exchange that continued to connect their communities, communities living on islands that were thousands of miles apart.

Finally, because this history is so long, complex, and mysterious, lots of people have come up with stories of how the Polynesians might have crossed the ocean. Many of those people were outsiders who didn’t believe the oral histories told by Polynesians. And so many of the outsiders’ histories were misleading—or just plain wrong.

In this article, we’re going to look at the way Fata Ariu Levi re-created the narrative of how his family reached Samoa. But we’re also going to see how their story is part of a bigger history. This longer and larger history is one that explains how the ancestors of today’s Polynesians overcame the challenges of settling the region we call Oceania and built complex societies and trade networks.

The peoples of Oceania

The vast Oceanian zone is peopled today by many diverse societies. Scholars tend to label these societies based on their languages and their cultures. But these labels are not generally names these peoples use themselves.

The oldest inhabitants of Oceania are most likely the Melanesians, whose ancestors lived in Southeast Asia. Tens of thousands of years ago, the Melanesians built boats and migrated to nearby islands like Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Vanuatu. It’s likely that some Melanesian groups were the ancestors of the original inhabitants of Australia as well. 

Later, other groups of people known as the Austronesians also moved into the Pacific. They mainly came from further north, probably the island of Taiwan, and passed through the areas occupied by the Melanesians as they moved eastward.

Samoans like Fata Ariu Levi belong to a third group, the Polynesians, who spread even further into the Pacific Ocean. The Polynesians settled a vast zone that spreads from Hawaii in the north, to Aotearoa (New Zealand) in the south, and Rapanui (Easter Island) in the east. They likely even reached the coast of South America. For a long time, it was unclear how the Polynesians were related to the other peoples of Oceania. 

How people settled Oceania

It’s amazing to think that people without modern technology were able to build societies that stretched across these vast distances. In fact, for a long time, researchers didn’t believe they could have done it. One historian, Andrew Sharp, even wrote in 1956 that Polynesians must have just reached each new island by mistake or by shipwreck, rather than on purpose. 

Polynesians themselves, of course, always claimed that their ancestors had sailed purposefully and had figured out how to connect these islands in permanent trade routes. And there was some evidence that supported these claims. An archaeological study set in the Cook Islands, for example, uncovered trade goods such as stone tools that came from islands as far as Samoa, 1,000 miles away, and the Marquesas, 1,500 miles away. But Sharp and others like him didn’t believe the evidence. They thought it would have been too difficult for these navigators to find their way across the Pacific given the winds, currents, and storms of this vast ocean.

Slowly, scientists and historians “discovered” that the people of Oceania had technologies that could have overcome these problems. They found that Polynesian wayfinders could use stars, memorization, observation of animals, timing, and other techniques to figure out the direction they were headed and their general location at sea. They also found that some skilled navigators could tell by waves, currents—and just the feeling of the movement of the water—where they were. Finally, these navigators could measure winds to help their steering. 

Gradually, historians accepted that the people of Oceania could not only settle new areas but also remain connected, exchanging ideas and goods for many generations. Of course, the Polynesians and their neighbors already knew this. Their oral histories and community knowledge, held by men and women like Fata Ariu Levi, told stories of their ancestors coming across the ocean and of their ongoing relationships with other communities on other islands. In fact, over time, new scientific knowledge showed that the historical accounts told by the Polynesian, Melanesian, and Austronesian communities were quite accurate. One great example has to do with the origins of Polynesians’ ancestors. Many Polynesian oral traditions give long accounts of their ancestors as members of both Melanesian and Austronesian communities, and recent DNA (genetic) analysis has confirmed this. It’s likely that Austronesians from Taiwan moved through and intermarried with Melanesians in Southeast Asia, mixing their technology and knowledge. Together, these Austronesians and Melanesians produced the Polynesians who set out across the ocean. 

When people settled Oceania

One mystery remained: When did all of this occur? Again, science and oral tradition largely agree on the answer—and it’s surprising. Most of Oceania was settled quite recently. It’s likely that the ancestors of the Polynesians, a people called the Lapita, were living off Papua New Guinea 3,000 years ago. Their descendants reached islands like Samoa and Tonga around 2,800 years ago (800 BCE). But distant islands like Hawaii were only reached about 1,000 years ago, and Aotearoa (New Zealand) around 800 years ago (1200 CE). Much of this movement was a result of population growth. As island communities grew, the islands themselves stayed the same size, so younger generations set out in search of new homes and more space. 

When Europeans arrived in these places in the 1800s, they found big, sophisticated kingdoms and states. The Polynesian people arrived on islands like Hawaii and New Zealand and built large, enduring, complex societies in just a few hundred years. But understanding that process meant putting together science, history, and oral tradition. That is the work still being carried out by leaders like Fata Ariu Levi, who often work with scientists and historians. Recently, Levi has written three books on this topic that combine oral tradition with science. He has found that by using all these sources, we can understand not only the complexity of the history of this vast oceanic zone, but also the long history of how families like his found their way to Oceanian places like Samoa and built the societies they live in today.