Q 01/05

Which of these English words was borrowed from a Polynesian language?

A) Kayak

B) Shampoo

C) Tattoo

D) Safari

Answer · why

C) Tattoo

Tattoo. It first appears in English in James Cook's writing of 1769, picked up in Tahiti, where the art is called tatau; 'taboo' followed from Tonga e...

Q 02/05

Which three points define the corners of the Polynesian Triangle?

A) Tahiti, Fiji and Hawaii

B) Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island

C) Samoa, Tonga and New Zealand

D) Hawaii, Fiji and Easter Island

Answer · why

B) Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island

Hawaii, New Zealand and Easter Island. The triangle is only a rule of thumb: a scattering of Polynesian communities, the 'outliers', live well outside...

Q 03/05

The name Polynesia, coined by a French writer in 1756, comes from Greek words meaning what?

A) Small islands

B) Many islands

C) Black islands

D) Far islands

Answer · why

B) Many islands

Many islands. Charles de Brosses coined it in a 1756 book on southern voyages, and the names Micronesia, 'small islands', and Melanesia, 'black island...

Q 04/05

Which giant flightless birds of New Zealand were hunted to extinction after Polynesian settlers arrived?

A) Dodos

B) Elephant birds

C) Great auks

D) Moa

Answer · why

D) Moa

Moa. The largest stood taller than an ostrich; settlers arriving around 1300 hunted them hard for a century or so, leaving butchery sites heaped with ...

Q 05/05

Norfolk Island and New Caledonia are dry-land tips of which mostly sunken continent?

A) Zealandia

B) Sahul

C) Sundaland

D) Doggerland

Answer · why

A) Zealandia

Zealandia. About 94% of it lies under the Pacific: its crust was stretched thin as it broke away from Gondwana, and it sank; in 2017 a team of geologi...