Antoni Judit: Tapa, a fakéreg művészete. Válogatás Ignácz Ferenc gyűjteményéből. (Távoli világok emberközelben I. Gödöllői Városi Múzeum, 2006)

Where did these peoples come from, who were they and how did they populate the archipelago of the Pacific Ocean? To answer these questions with a certain accuracy became possible only thanks to archaeological research carried out in the last 10 to 20 years, even though the origin and expansion of the Polynesian peoples has been a major subject of scholarly research ever since Europeans could get to know them more closely in the middle of the 18th century subsequent to "discovering" them in the beginning of the 16th century. Polynesia (meaning "many islands" in Greek) has an area of some 311,587 square kilometres, its population being nearly 6 million; anthropologically, however, merely 1 million of this number is to be considered as "true" Polynesian. They live on several thousands of islands of all sizes within the ocean area bound by an imaginary triangle determined by the Hawaii Islands, the Easter Island and New Zealand. The population of Polynesia shares this huge area with that of Melanesia (= black islands) and of Micronesia (= small islands). The history of how the area got populated is closely related to the history of the nearby continents, Asia and Australia, and with that of New Guinea, the second biggest island in the world. South-East Asia is the original land from where the wayfarers set off several times in the course of millennia. The first continent conquered by the representatives of Homo sapiens was Australia about 128,000 years ago. The next one was New Guinea to be populated partly from the direction of South-East Asia 40,000 - 50,000 years ago, partly from the direction of Australia, so that about 10 000 - 20 000 years were needed for the new dwellers to reach the central area of the island. On the other hand, the greatest migration of peoples of the world history took place when the Austronesian peoples discovered and conquered the islands of the Pacific Ocean. The term 'Austronesian' or 'Malayo-Polynesian' designates a family of languages. These denominations came to be used, when the first European sailors, with captain Cook among them, realised that the original inhabitants of Hawaii, of the Marquesas Islands and of the Society Islands, not to mention New Zealand and the Malay Archipelago speak languages that have very similar and homogeneous vocabulary and grammar. With the help of the comparative historical linguistic research, which took place much later, the 'linguistic original home' could be identified. This means a relatively well delineated area from where, most probably, these languages took their origin, and where they could widely expand. Archaeological research made a link between the linguistic homeland and the peoples who lived there in older times, more exactly; the supposed linguistic homeland has been associated with the legacy of these peoples, with the archaeological cultures belonging to them. The Austronesian language family plays a very important role in the prehistory of South-East Asia. The common original homeland and the predecessors of the AustroAsian and of the Thai languages are believed to be identified by archaeology and linguistics as the ricegrowing regions of South China and as the peoples who lived there 5 000 - 10 000 years ago. The peoples speaking the proto-Aaustronesian language were to be found among the above mentioned group of peoples and by gradually expanding for nearly 2 000 years, they conquered the neighbouring, then sparsely populated territories around. During their expansion, about 3000 years ago, they reached as far as to Taiwan, where, beside rice growing, they also produced millet, in addition, they raised pork and poultry, they kept dogs, they hunted with bow and fishing in the ocean played more and more important role in their everyday lives, including the building of boats necessary for this. As soon as nearly 1 000 years later, tropical fruits and root crops appeared in their diet, they built large wooden houses with finely cut stone instruments, also, pottery was already known to them, they used looms, and what is more, they were, most probably, capable of preparing tapa at that time. To develop shipping became non less than vital for them when the sea level grew as a consequence of the melting of the polar ice caps due to the general warming up of the climate in the end if the ice-age. The Austronesian peoples were ready to conquer the Pacific Ocean in this period of time, viz. around 2500 B.C., for their ships were equipped with sails and each with an outrigger, a very important invention greatly easing long sea trips. From Taiwan, they reached relatively soon to Samoa, the heart of Oceania in 1000 B.C. covering at least 7000 kilometres, occupying in the meantime the Philippines, East Indonesia, Northern Borneo, a part of Micronesia and the archipelago of Melanesia. Peoples speaking the ancestral languages of the Papuan language family had long been living by then in the inner regions of New Guinea; therefore, the Austronesians populated only the coast, just the same as in the case of certain bigger Melanesian islands. They created the fundamental elements of the culture which is characteristic of Polynesia even today in the Fiji-Tonga-Samoa tri-