"Time travel walk" - Stage 6

Proto Eastern Fijian / Polynesian (about 2,900 years ago)

This period embraces the settlement by the "Lapita people" of Samoa and Tonga, after sailing up to a thousand kilometers between these island groups and between each of them and Fiji. At the same time a common language was developed that reflected the closer contact at the time among the Austronesian communities of Eastern Fiji and Samoa (to the northeast) and Tonga (to the southeast), and a drifting away, for a while, from the communities in the western parts of Fiji and Rotuma. Later on, in the next stage of our journey, a distinctive Polynesian language will have developed as direct contact with Fiji becomes less frequent, while increased interaction between the west and east of Fiji will have led to a convergence among the Austronesian dialects in that group of islands.

One name representative of this period is mänuka. We already met, under a different name, the "other" mänuka, Leptospermum scoparium (kahikaatoa), in Stage 3, and you will have walked past many of the "Stage 6" trees, relations of the Leptospermum mänuka and known botanically as Kunzea ericoides, in the course of your journey if you have been taking it on foot. It is a taller, longer-lived tree with finer foliage and much smaller flowers than its namesake; both trees provide wonderful havens for birds and other wildlife, as well as protection for regenerating native forest. You can read more about the Stage 6 "cover plant" and the evolution of its name by pressing on the links below.

*Manuka (Proto-Polynesian form)

Mänuka (Modern Mäori)

Both pages have links to other plant names incorporating the root word *nuka from which mänuka has been formed.