63
FIG. 4 (bottom right):
Figure, ti’i. Society Islands,
French Polynesia. 19th century.
Andesite.
Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
inv. ET. 35.5.49.
crossed paths. Moreover, while Australia became isolated
quite early on, the coasts of New Guinea and
of the Solomon Islands remained connected to other
places through trade networks that existed throughout
Remote Oceania. A long succession of voyages
was required for humanity to conquer the Pacifi c and
then to maintain cultural identity in an area composed
of such widely dispersed habitable lands.
Our knowledge of traditional Oceania is limited
due to the circumstances surrounding its early encounters
with the Western world. The so-called fi fth
continent was the last to be explored by Europeans.
While the fi rst Western crossing of the Pacifi c was
made by Ferdinand Magellan in a caravel in 1520,
and several other sporadic voyages followed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, thorough exploratory
voyages by European nations did not really
get underway until the second half of the eighteenth
century. They encountered cultures that struck them
as meager, having neither metal nor pottery and that
FIG. 1 (left): Tapa.
Viti Levu, Republic of Fiji.
Barkcloth.
Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
inv. ET. 38.15.51.
FIG. 2 (left): Statue of the
tuna-fi shing deity Pou
Hakanononga. Ahu o Rongo,
Hanga Roa, Rapa Nui, Chile.
14th century.
Basalt.
Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
inv. ET. 35.5.340.
FIG. 3 (right):
Figurine, po’o. Marquesas
Islands, French Polynesia.
19th century.
Human bone and hair.
Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire,
inv. ET. 50.60.
cally modern humans, at a time when Europe was
still dominated by Neanderthals. “Remote Oceania,”
made up of the islands further north and to the
east of Near Oceania, was discovered and populated
much later, between the fourth millennium BC and
AD 1000, by another wave of migrants coming from
further away.
Above and beyond the differences in the chronology
of these two phases of settlement, it is notable
that the inhabitants of Remote Oceania had mastered
long-distance navigation, which the Australians and
the Papuans had not. On the other hand, in New
Guinea and the Solomon Islands, masks played a
central role, while they were virtually unknown in
Remote Oceania, where architecture related to ritual
activity was more developed. In short, there are
a number of opposing elements between these two
regions. One was more than 50,000 years old, while
the other was barely 5,000, and they shared neither
cultural traditions nor linguistic ones. The inhabitants
of Near Oceania speak a patchwork collection of orphan
languages, while Remote Oceania is dominated
by the family of Austronesian languages. However,
despite these signifi cant differences, there are also
connections between the two Oceanias. Remote Oceania
could have been reached only by way of Near
Oceania, a fact that engendered phenomena of acculturation
and cultural overlay among the peoples who