08-05-2018, 11:46 AM
Jared Diamond described a very small island in the pacific with a similar lifestyle in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. His description was not so idyllic. Their oral history covered many different attempts at dealing with what seemed like regular occurrences of demand for food exceeding supply and included warfare, murder in all its permutations (including infanticide), and suicide including sailing off to find new lands. When you contemplate the noble polynesian explorers spreading out across the pacific it was probably most often the case that they were trying to leave a bad situation behind, something bad enough to make them risk it all on a wild gamble.