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Why is New Britan's group of islands so important in the history of Polynesia?


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: They were the hearthland - - - the first island to be settled as The Polynesians set forth on their Voyage of Colonization of the Pacific. And New Britain Island in particular is a 'linch pin' island, a large island with resources and diverse land were suited to sustaining a large population..

Will resort to cut and paste...
http://www.pbs.org/wayfinders/polynesian...
""""The islands scattered along the north shore of New Guinea first drew these canoe people eastwards into the ocean. By 1500 B.C., these voyagers began moving east beyond New Guinea, first along the Solomon Island chain, and then to the Banks and Vanuatu Archipelagos. As the gaps between islands grew from tens of miles at the edge of the western Pacific to hundreds of miles along the way to Polynesia, and then to thousands of miles in the case of voyages to the far corners of the Polynesian triangle, these oceanic colonizers developed great double-hulled vessels capable of carrying colonists as well as all their supplies, domesticated animals, and planting materials. As the voyages became longer, they developed a highly sophisticated navigation system based on observations of the stars, the ocean swells, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs to find their way over the open ocean. And, as they moved farther away from the biotic centers of Southeast Asia and New Guinea, finding the flora and fauna increasingly diminished, they developed a portable agricultural system, whereby the domesticated plants and animals were carried in their canoes for transplantation on the islands they found.

Once they had reached the mid-ocean archipelagos of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, these seafarers - the immediate ancestors of the Polynesians - were alone in the ocean, for only they had the canoes and navigational skills needed to push so far into the Pacific. The gaps between islands widen greatly in the eastern Pacific and the prevailing winds become less and less favorable for sailing to the east. Nonetheless, the archaeological evidence indicates that they sailed eastward to the Cook, Society, and Marquesas Groups, and from there crossed thousands of miles of open ocean to colonize the islands of Hawai'i in the north, Easter Island in the southeast, and New Zealand in the southwest, thus completing settlement, by around 1000 AD, of the area we know today as the Polynesian Triangle."""

http://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/encyc...
"""
Largest island in the Bismarck Archipelago, part of Papua New Guinea; capital Rabaul; population (1995 est) 285,000. It has an area of 37,800 sq km/14,600 sq mi, an average width of 80 km/50 mi and is 482 km/300 mi long. The highest mountain is Mount Sinewit, 2,438 m/7,999 ft. Copra is the chief product; coffee, cocoa, palm oil, timber, and iron are also produced. Gold, copper, and coal are mined. The population is Melanesian.

Two volcanoes erupted in September 1994, covering Rabaul in ash and mud. There were no deaths, largely because of a volcano monitoring programme which detected the pending eruption; over 30,000 people were evacuated from the area. There was a previous eruption in 1937. ""

Peace...