User:Fang 23/Prehistoric Hawaii
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Prehistoric Hawaii refers to the period in Hawaiian history that occurred before European contact. Hawaiian prehistory began around 300CE when Polynesians from the Marquesas Islands discovered and settled Hawaii and ended around 1778 CE when Captain James Cook and his crew accidentally found Hawaii while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage between Alaska and Asia.[1] Due to a lack of written records from this time period, nearly all of our knowledge of prehistoric Hawaiian society comes from archeology and Native Hawaiian oral histories.[1] Prehistoric Native Hawaiians were farmers and fishers and retained an essentially Neolithic level of technology during their entire prehistory but nonetheless were able to develop complex forms of social organization such as Chiefdoms during the end of this era.[1] Indeed by the end of the prehistoric period the native Hawaiians had developed the most complex political system in Oceana.[2]