Polynesia (many islands) refers to a triangular grouping of Central and South Pacific Ocean island archipelagos settled by seafaring voyagers from a heartland in Tonga and Samoa. The Polynesian people fanned out to island groups to the east as far as Tahiti, the Marquesas, New Zealand, and Hawai‘i. The various Polynesian languages are still close and there are substantial cultural similarities between the various groups; their mythologies in particular tend to be local reworkings of commonly shared tales.
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