The ancestral Polynesian culture appears to have originated out of Lapita once the Lapita people expanded into the area of Tonga and Samoa, which had happened by 1000 BC. While for a time there appear to have been communication between the Tonga/Samoa island groups and the Fiji islands to the west, eventually this contact was broken, and Tonga/Samoa went its own way, developing the linguistic, genetic, and cultural differences that were to become characteristic of all of Polynesia.
This common culture was emerging by 500 BC, and was characterized first by different pottery styles than Lapita, as well as different adze styles. Farming initially was still shifting horticulture with the various root and tree crops that had been typical of Lapita. There was probably a great dependency on various fibers and wood for various everyday objects, none of which have survived archaeologically. Kava was present, having been domesticated in Vanuatu and carried into Polynesia with the first Lapita settlers. Clothing and mats were made using the domesticated paper mulberry, producing the tapa so typical of many parts of Polynesia. It is also likely that certain social characteristics first developed in the Polynesian homeland of Tonga/Samoa, including unilineal descent groups with ranking based upon birth order, and perhaps various craft specialists.
Pottery gradually became less common, and was totally abandoned by 200-300 AD. This was not due to the lack of suitable clays. Pottery may no longer have been needed as an everyday item, since the use of earth ovens meant that pots were not necessary for cooking, and wood and coconut shell supplied every needed type of container. When other items became prestige items, pottery was no longer needed for that purpose.
There are difficulties in stating exactly when the remainder of Polynesia was settled. On many islands, the evidence of the earliest villages are probably buried under erosion deposits. This is particularly true since valley erosion on many islands was increased by human deforestation. As a result, it is unlikely that the first settlement on any island has actually been discovered, and even if so, it might be difficult to reliably date such a site. In many instances, the first evidence of occupation is determined by pollen cores or similar methods, showing deforestation and an increase in other pollen from domesticated plants, but not everyone agrees that this is definitive proof of human activity.
There appears to have been a long pause between the occupation of Samoa and Tonga at around 1000 BC and the occupation of the rest of Polynesia. Various evidence for occupation dates are as follows, though it is easy to find other dates published (in your text, for example).
The above dates are for the most part the earliest possible dates; as noted, many published dates are somewhat later for all of these areas. Some claim that a date of 600 AD for the Marquesas and Tahiti is more reasonable, and that Hawaii, Rapa Nui, and New Zealand followed by 1000 AD. A recently released date for Rapa Nui claims that people did not arrive there until 1200 AD. There is not space here to deal with the various claims, though given the dense populations found on some of these islands, and the development of high chiefdoms on many islands by 1000-1200 AD, and perhaps even political states in Hawai'i, the earlier dates would seem more valid, at least more most of the islands of Polynesia. Archaeology is only beginning to uncover the prehistory of many of these islands, and much that is known is beyond the scope of this course.
The Polynesians not only had voyages of colonization to the north, east, and south, but they also doubled back to the west, into what are sometimes referred to as the Polynesian "outliers". These include several islands on the eastern edge of Melanesia, and two in Micronesia, and include the island of Tikopia. These islands were initially settled by Lapita people in the push into the Samoa/Tonga area. However, after Polynesian culture and language was fully developed at about 1200 AD, there appears to have been a recolonization of these islands by Polynesians, who brought with them their language and many other aspects of Polynesian culture. At archaeological sites, there is often a late Polynesian phase overlying an earlier non-Polynesian phase. The original population was not destroyed, but their culture and language were changed.
Today, outlier oral traditions speak of a "homeland" in the "east". On Tikopia, the oral traditions also speak of a period of conflict that was at least in part due to aggression by the Polynesian invaders against the indigenous population. (It may also have been in part due to environmental change, as a rich marine lagoon embayment turned into a brackish lake.)
Tikopia is small island of about 1.8 square miles that has always had a dense population, probably about 1,200 people. It is quite isolated, with its nearest larger neighbors over 140 miles away in the Solomon's and in Vanuatu. Perhaps because of its small size, Tikopians were, according to Jared Diamond, a "bottom-up" society, where the effects of human activity on the environment so obviously and immediately affected everyone that sustainable practices were easy to implement. (Diamond, Collapse, 2000 p. 278)
Tikopians made only small canoes, but still could and did import stone from their distant neighbors, since little suitable good quality basalt or obsidian existed on Tikopia. The higher slopes of Tikopia were devoted entirely to tree corps, while on lower slopes dry land taro and yams were planted under other trees producing betel nuts, a paper bark tree (not the paper mulberry grown throughout Polynesia), the vi-apple and banana. In the few open areas, taro and yams are grown with abundant mulching to preserve moisture. Domesticted pigs were abolished, since they competed with people for food. Only chickens and dogs were raised by 1600, and when the one marine embayment became a brackish lake, it was used as a fish pond for semi-domesticated fish. Catching both the fish in the pond an the fish in the sea were regulated by the chiefs to prevent over fishing.
In addition, Tikopians appear to have regulated the birth rate, with the conscious purpose of not overpopulating their island and placing an impossible strain on their food resources. Various methods were used, including coitus interruptus, abortion, infanticide, deliberately choosing not to have children, and even suicide or virtual suicide (setting off an overseas voyage with no expectation of surviving.) Tikopians claimed that one to no more than four children was quite enough. After the decrease in food resources when the only lagoon became a brackish lake, the end result of the discord created was that members of one clan fled the island rather than wait for either warfare or starvation to end their lives. (All of this is according to oral tradition, originally recorded by anthropologist Raymond Firth and used by Diamond in his book Collapse to explain the success of Tikopia, when certain other islands failed, as will be discussed in a later lesson.) In any event, Tikopia's population did not increase, did not suffer a collapse, and their environment was not depleted. This was by the conscious decision of Tikopians to change certain aspects of their culture.
While much is unknown about Polynesia, there is one, and perhaps two mysteries involving a domesticated plant widely grown in Polynesia prior to contact with Europeans, and perhaps of a domesticated animal used prior to contact in Chile, in South America. The plant is the sweet potato, and the animal, the chicken.
DNA studies of the sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, indicate that the plant had one origin, in the northern part of South America. It may have been domesticated in Peru as early as 2,500 BC. Yet wherever European explorers went in Polynesia, people were growing sweet potatoes, and in some areas it was their most important crop. So how did the sweet potatoes get there?
It is still possible that drifting or rafting on vegetation might account for the initial introduction into Polynesia or that birds brought the seeds. (A 2008 computer simulation indicated that drift voyages from several points along the American coast might indeed reach Polynesian islands.) A few archaeologists (most notably Thor Heyerdahl, to be discussed in a later lesson) have used the distribution of the sweet potato as evidence that Polynesia was populated from the the Americas. This of course ignores the linguistic evidence, the archaeological evidence, and the fact that all the other domesticated plants and animals indicate a west to east migration across the Pacific. Since South Americans were not noted for their deep sea fishing abilities, or large sea-faring vessels, many archaeologists have assumed that it is much more likely that a Polynesian canoe reached the mainland of South America and brought back the sweet potato, which than spread throughout Polynesia. In any case, the sweet potato was being domesticated in the Cook Islands by 1000 AD, in Hawaii no later than 1300 AD, in New Zealand by 1400 AD, and on Easter Island by 1500 AD. (These are not necessarily the earliest dates.)
Domesticated chickens originated from wild jungle fowl in southeast Asia, and were possibly domesticated as early as 6,000 BC in Thailand, though they may well have been independently domesticated at several places in southern Asia. The Lapita people picked them up on their southward voyaging and spread domesticated chickens throughout much of Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. (Domesticated chickens also spread from southeast Asia into much of the rest of Asia, Africa, and Europe.) Even though the Spanish explorer Pizarro recorded that when he reached Peru in 1532 the Inca were using domesticated chickens, it was thought that the chickens had been introduced via Spanish settlements to the north, and had simply reached South America in advance of the Spanish expansion.
However, in 2007 some fifty chicken bones (representing at least five birds) were found at the site of El Arenal-1 in Chile, and dated at about 1350 AD. The discovers originally claimed that DNA studies indicated the bones were identical to chicken bones of a comparable age from Tonga and Samoa. The DNA claim has since been retracted, but the radiocarbon dates remain. If this discovery proves valid, it may well be evidence that at least some Polynesian voyagers reached South America, dropped off chickens, and returned with sweet potatoes.