Word: polynesia
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When he sat in the uproar of the National Assembly in Paris, Pouvanaa Oopa, sole representative of Tahiti and its sister Pacific islands of French Polynesia, was the mildest of men. But back home in peaceful Tahiti, Pouvanaa Oopa became a terror in paradise...
...answer the question, as well as to "prove" his pet thesis that Polynesia was first settled by Indians from South America, Explorer Thor (Kon-Tiki) Heyerdahl in 1955 led an archaeological expedition to Easter Island. The islanders first tried to sell him their present-day wood carvings ("If we put on old rags, we are much better paid," explained one amiably), and promptly hailed him as "Señor Kon-Tiki." They attributed to Heyerdahl an aku-aku, or magical spirit, superior to their...
Just about the last place France expected to be troublesome was Tahiti. The largest island of French Polynesia, Tahiti, 2,600 miles southeast of Hawaii, spends most of its time dreaming under swaying palms while the surf breaks gently on the coral reefs. Generations of expatriates-from Melville to Robert Louis Stevenson to Gauguin-have fled to the islands seeking forgetfulness in the company of sunlit skies and black-haired amoral vahines...
Davis, the Cook Islands' chief surgeon who sailed 10,000 miles to attend the School of Public Health, said "Kon-Tiki" skipper Thor Heyerdahl considered most of the cultural similarities between the Peruvians and the Polynesians when he said the South Americans settled in Polynesia, but he neglected to consider the differences in the social structures and religions of the two groups...
...Peruvians. Davis maintains the contrary. He says that there are similarities in culture, but contends that a Polynesian Chief sailed to Peru, perhaps over the same route used by Davis. The chief and his associates traveled along the Peruvian coast, picking up the culture, and transplanted it in Polynesia. This thesis is in almost direct contradiction to the much-hailed Kon-Tiki version, but some anthropologist now believe Davis' winter voyage has pushed Kon-Tiki into little more than a good adventure story...