Polynesia

Polynesia means many islands, and the UN's version of it takes in Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, Niue, the Cook Islands, Tokelau, French Polynesia, Wallis and Futuna, American Samoa, and Pitcairn — about 690,000 people on some 8,700 square kilometers of land. That is a much smaller thing than the cultural Polynesia most people picture, because the Polynesian triangle also has Hawaii at its northern apex, New Zealand at its southwestern one, and Rapa Nui at its eastern tip, and the UN files all three somewhere else. So the statistical Polynesia is what is left after the biggest Polynesian places have been assigned to other regions.

The islands come in two kinds. High volcanic islands — Tahiti, Savai'i, Rarotonga — are steep, green, and dramatic, with Mount Orohena on Tahiti the highest point in this grouping at 2,241 meters. Low coral atolls, of which Tuvalu is almost entirely composed, barely clear the sea. Between them lies an immensity of ocean; French Polynesia's 118 islands are strewn across an area of Pacific the size of Western Europe. Trade winds blow steadily from the east, cyclones come from the northwest in summer, and lagoon fisheries and coconut have been the basis of subsistence for as long as anyone has lived here.

Polynesians settled this ocean deliberately, sailing double-hulled canoes upwind against the trades, reading stars and swells, and by about 1200 they had found nearly every habitable island in an area covering a tenth of the earth's surface — the greatest sustained feat of navigation before the modern era. Their languages remain mutually intelligible enough that a Samoan and a Tahitian can recognize each other's numbers. Christian missionaries and colonial powers arrived in the nineteenth century; France still holds French Polynesia, and the United States American Samoa. Tourism, fishing licenses, and remittances now sustain the economies, and rising seas threaten to make Tuvalu the first country climate change erases.

• Samoa
  The heart of Polynesia country in region
• Tonga
  The last Polynesian kingdom country in region
• Tuvalu
  A low-lying nation on the front line of climate change country in region
• Hawaiian Islands
  A volcanic chain in the central Pacific, the most isolated archipelago on Earth culturally Polynesian
• New Zealand
  Two islands of mountains, fjords, and Maori heritage culturally Polynesian
• Pacific Ocean
  Earth's largest and deepest ocean defining feature
• Oceania
  The smallest continent, built around Australia and the Pacific isles located in