The time Polynesians lived in the subantarctic
A new study shows that Enderby Island, 500 kilometers south of New Zealand, was settled by Polynesians for about 70 years. According to the author of the study, it also disproves the widespread belief that Polynesians ever went to Antarctica.
In the popular imagination, Polynesian culture is unlike any other.
It is a people of explorers. A people who conquered the Pacific Ocean long before anyone else. A people who in their outrigger canoes would fearlessly go on long voyages into the unknown. But also, in the popular imagination, it is a people who dressed lightly and appropriately for the typically tropical islands they inhabited.
To many it will therefore come as a surprise that a new study has documented that around 1300 AD a group of Polynesians settled for up to 100 years on the remote Enderby Island. Part of the Auckland Islands archipelago, it lies around 500 kilometers south of New Zealand and about 2000 kilometers north of Antarctica. It is located right in the middle of the latitudinal region known as the Roaring Forties and is considered a subantarctic island.
Not an ideal place for a scantily clad Polynesian, one would imagine.
And according to Atholl Anderson, Professor Emeritus at the Australian National University, and main author of the study, the cold would, indeed, have been the main problem for these Polynesians.
“It would have been very difficult for them. Oddly enough, Polynesians in the cool climate of southern New Zealand made no closed clothing such as trousers or jackets, nor footwear or hats. They wore kilts and capes, either woven or made out of sealskin, but they must often have been very cold,” Atholl Anderson told Polar Journal AG.
Strife made them come, food made them stay
Why, then, did these people choose to not only migrate that far south, but to stay for so long?
Well, what Enderby Island lacked in warmth and comfort, it made up for in food supply.
Enderby island is about five kilometers long and mostly shrub-covered, while the much larger and higher Auckland Island just to the south, is grassy. But from the shore to about 70 meters above sea level, both islands have thick and tangled forest. Between these wind sheared trees and on the sand dunes of Enderby Island, the Polynesians found an abundant food source: sea lions who come to breed.
Moreover, the Auckland Islands are home to a big, cabbage-like plant known as Macquarie Island Cabbage. This, along with seals, fish, and the chicks of albatrosses and other seabirds, made for a rich and plentiful diet.
The feasting on these foods is also the main trace left of the settlers. Along a 500-meter stretch of the beach on Enderby Island numerous Polynesian cooking ovens and leftover charcoal were found. And in one area of the beach, there was a midden full of seal bones, albatross bones, and lots of other bones, many with cut marks from butchery.
“You would think that once they got so far south and experienced the cold that they would just turn around and go back north. But they were from a culture that was used to settling new islands, so they probably thought that they would at least give it a chance,” Atholl Anderson said.
“I suppose they got there and realized that there were no problems with food resources, so from that perspective things were fine. They may even have explored other islands in the area after they settled, ” he said.
But while the ample food supply was the carrot that made them stay, the Polynesians may also have been under the influence of a whip.
“Often Polynesians only went somewhere new because of strife with other groups. So they might have left under those circumstances and then felt they couldn’t go back,” he said.
The Antarctic journey of Ui-te-Rangiora
Atholl Anderson is now retired but while he was active, his career as an archaeologist took him far and wide. From Madagascar, across the Indian Ocean, through Melanesia and Polynesia, and all the way to the Galapagos Islands, he studied remote island societies.
Originally, though, he is from the south of New Zealand and some of his ancestors were from the Polynesian group that first settled in New Zealand: the Maori. For him, therefore, this study was unusually important. And not only for geographical reasons.
In the study, he argues against the widely held belief that Polynesian explorers went as far south as Antarctica itself. This belief spread, according to Atholl Anderson, because of a traditional Polynesian story recorded by the British ethnographer Percy Smith in the 19th century.
“It has been argued that the Maori got as far south as Antarctica and even walked on the ice but I have never thought that that was at all probable. I am part Maori myself, and in our tribe, Ngai Tahu, which is the southernmost Maori tribe, we don’t have any such traditions, which we probably would have had, if we had actually done it,” he said.
The tradition recorded by Percy Smith speaks of a legendary Polynesian explorer named Ui-te-Rangiora, who on his travels is supposed to have seen both ice floes and large sea mammals.
But since then, Atholl Anderson said, it has been discovered that the tradition is not an original and ancient one, but one that had been added to Maori folklore at a later date. It is believed to have come from Polynesians who sailed on European sealing and whaling vessels that visited the Antarctic in the early 19th century.
“There is no evidence that these stories have any ancient origins. But the only way to resolve the question was through archeological evidence,” Atholl Anderson said.
No evidence on other islands
Archeological evidence, thus, was the motivation behind the recently published study. Its basis is in fieldwork from more than 15 years ago, but only now, in his retirement, has Atholl Anderson found the time to complete it.
In it, he focuses not only on the Polynesian remains found on Enderby Island, but also the absence of those on other subantarctic islands.
“We wanted to explore how far south the Polynesian exploration went. So we looked at Campbell Island [around 200 kilometers south of Enderby Island] and all other islands in the area 500 to 800 kilometers south of New Zealand. But there were no traces of Polynesian settlements there,” Atholl Anderson said.
Although they looked in all the obvious places, the only other place that shows signs of Polynesian settlements is the Snares Islands immediately south of New Zealand. Atholl Anderson did not rule out the possibility of new archeological findings in the future. But these findings, he believed, would only show signs of a temporary presence, not of a permanent settlement.
On Enderby Island, on the other hand, the settlement was easy to find.
“The settlement is really obvious when you reach Enderby Island. It is quite an extensive site. 500 meters along the front of the beach going back some meters, you can see debris from it. We don’t have that situation anywhere else in the subantarctic,” he said.
Left because of climate change
In 1998, Atholl Anderson’s own expedition discovered how old the settlement on Enderby Island really was. Before then, the remains were thought to be from the 1800s. New carbon dating methods now estimate the settlement to have been active between AD 1250 and 1320.
After AD 1320, no signs of human presence were found.
Eventually, it would seem, food abundance was not enough, and the hostile weather got the better of the settlers. In fact, Atholl Anderson’s best guess as to why they disappeared is that the weather got even worse than when they arrived.
Beginning in the 1300s, the world experienced a global cooling event known as the Little Ice Age. This climatic change is also believed to have caused the end of Norse settlements in Greenland and would have made life in the subpolar regions go from miserable to impossible.
“When the Little Ice Age kicked in in the southern hemisphere, the Westerly Wind Belt which is normally centered around 60 degrees south came up to about 45 degrees south, covering the Auckland Islands at 50 degrees south. Conditions would have been much colder, much windier, and more frequently stormy,” Atholl Anderson said.
But how, then, did they leave? After decades on a remote speck of land, did the new generations even remember where they had come from? If you ask Atholl Anderson, the answer is yes.
“Unless they were cast there by a storm, they would have known that they’d come south from New Zealand, and that they would need to head north to go back,” he said.
“But an interesting question is how they left. They must still have had their original boats because they couldn’t build new ones with the timber on the islands. The timber there is good enough to repair ocean-going canoes but probably not to build new ones,” Atholl Anderson said.
Ole Ellekrog, Polar Journal AG
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