disney

In the recent Disney hit Moana, the young female protagonist leaves her island home to follow the stars, which will help her find and enlist the demigod Maui to confront dark forces that have begun to choke all life in the ocean. The story is a newly-minted legend that is based on a historical mystery. Scholars suggest that the western Polynesian islands were settled 3,500 years ago, while central and eastern Polynesian islands were not settled until some 2,000 years later. This 2,000-year period is sometimes referred to as “The Long Pause,” in which voyaging halted. Once voyaging started up again, however, the rest of Polynesia—over 1,000 islands distributed over approximately 20 million square miles—were settled.