Polynesian Civilizations

Long before European sails broke the horizon of the South Pacific, a formidable maritime power was quietening the waves of Oceania.

The unification of Tahiti was forged through an alliance of local ambition and foreign steel.

By the close of the eighteenth century, a series of independent Pacific chiefdoms underwent a rapid, historic consolidation.

Prophecy and political intrigue swirled around the birth of the child first named Paiʻea, born into a fractured landscape of warring chiefs on the island of Hawaii.

For thousands of years, the ocean-spanning people of the South Pacific recognized a sacred center in the volcanic peaks of Savai'i and Upolu.

Scatter fifteen fragments of land across nearly two million square kilometers of the South Pacific Ocean, and the resulting nation is defined far more by the water that separates its people than the soil beneath their…