Polynesia: Did you mean...?

Map showing the Polynesian Triangle and some of its islands.

The Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947, led by the Norwegian Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002), successfully crossed 8,000 km (5,000 miles) of the Pacific Ocean from Peru to the Tuamotu Islands on a balsa-wood raft. The aim of the expedition was to demonstrate...

Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was a French neo-impressionist painter whose vivid paintings with their flat, bold colours and use of mystical and ambiguous symbols revolutionised art. Never quite gaining success in his own lifetime...

The hei tiki is a small personal adornment, fashioned by hand from tough pounamu (New Zealand greenstone or nephrite jade), and is worn around the neck. Hei means something looped around the neck, and tiki is a generic word used throughout...

Te Papa Tongawera (or simply Te Papa) is New Zealand's innovative national museum situated near the foreshore of beautiful Wellington harbour. Te Papa Tongawera means “container of treasures” in Te Reo Maori, which is the indigenous language...

This map illustrates the route and story of the Kon-Tiki Expedition (1947), a groundbreaking voyage led by Thor Heyerdahl (1914-2002), in which a crew of six sailed a balsa-wood raft from Callao, Peru, to Raroia Atoll in the Tuamotu Islands...

Menehune is the term applied to short-statured, forest-dwelling creatures of Hawaiian mythology and is part of a common mythology throughout Polynesia that describes secretive, supernatural beings with human-like attributes. Mysterious supernatural...

Ymir is a primordial giant, closely linked to the creation myth and the beginning of the world in Norse mythology. A creature resulting from the dramatic encounter between ice and fire, he was fed by a cosmic cow and his body parts served...

Polynesian navigation of the Pacific Ocean and its settlement began thousands of years ago. The inhabitants of the Pacific islands had been voyaging across vast expanses of ocean water sailing in double canoes or outriggers using nothing...

From a humble beginning as a sweet treat grown in gardens, sugar cane cultivation became an economic powerhouse, and the growing demand for sugar stimulated the colonization of the New World by European powers, brought slavery to the forefront...