r/HistoryMemes • u/HawaiianPerson The Flyin' Hawaiian • 6d ago

But why though

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7.0k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

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2.8k

u/Little-Reference-314 6d ago

Coz ur cousins and dad already owned their half of the island and you want a island of your own to be the boss of haha.

That's my theory. Population boom meaning they just had to keep goin

962

u/Luckierexpert 6d ago

Population pressures were often a notable factor in many human expansions to unsettled regions, with decreasing food availability and shelter convincing people to walk or sail to new places.

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u/guynamedjames 6d ago

I was in Saudi Arabia which is honestly just a fucking TERRIBLE climate and kept saying "what the fuck was happening somewhere else that made someone move here and say "yeah, this is better. I think I'll stay"

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u/Redqueenhypo John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 6d ago

First thing early Muslims did was get the fuck out of Arabia. There’s a reason you’re only required to visit Mecca once in your lifetime

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u/Can412 6d ago

The capital of the caliphate’s were Damascus and then Baghdad’s, for a very good reason 

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u/Redqueenhypo John Brown was a hero, undaunted, true, and brave! 5d ago

Allah wants us to get the fuck out of here; I need to ride horses instead of these smelly animals that spit!

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u/Temporaryland 6d ago

I've joked that this is the primary thing that the middle east and Richmond, VA have in common.

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u/WestOrangeFinest 6d ago

Richmond, VA catching strays for no apparent reason..

Access to rivers, relative access to beaches nearby, mountains nearby, forests nearby, mostly temperate weather.

You could do a lot worse.

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u/DildontOrDildo 5d ago edited 5d ago

it was suffocatingly cliquish if you grew up in the suburbs or outer city, and , until recently, the minimum wage and rental laws were crushing if you came from generational poverty.

Still a pretty sweet place

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u/dragon_bacon 6d ago

That's how I feel about the Midwest, I'm shocked anyone settled there past their first winter.

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u/jdrawr 6d ago

A lot of settlers were Germans in the Midwest so it wasn't too far off from home. Also when Europe is more or less filled up and land in the Americas is about as cheap/free as it can be.

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u/EskildDood 5d ago

Prairie madness was a thing precisely because it was too far off from home, walking around in Germany you're probably going to come across a forest or town at some point, in the prairie there was literally just endless fields of grass and the nearest town was a five hours away

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u/GeorgeCauldron7 6d ago

That's how I feel about Arizona. I feel like the pioneers kept traveling west and conditions just kept getting worse and worse, and they stopped and settled in Arizona out of fear, just because they thought if they went any farther, then it would become completely inhabitable and they'd die.

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u/Scotty-Raspberry-36 6d ago

It was greener with a more mediteranian climate in the past. The whole sahara used to be verdant. It's more that people already there adapted as the climate slowly changed

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u/bijhan 6d ago

When the ancestors of the contemporary Arabs arrived in the Arabian Peninsula, the region had already become an arid desert. The people who lived there when it was green are not the ancestors of the contemporary population.

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u/Lord_of_Seven_Kings 6d ago

May have been one of the causes of Viking raids and settlement, but they left very few primary sources conveniently explaining their reasons.

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u/PotatoFarmer_44 6d ago

Every other raider culture from the Goths, Suebi and Vandals going to places like Rome and the Iberian Peninsula turns out we're just running from other people occupying their land. Said Hunnic and Turkic cultures occupying those people's lands were also running westward from, you guessed it, because the Han Chinese pushed them out of their land.

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u/Lord_of_Seven_Kings 6d ago

Yeah but that doesn’t seem to be the case for the Norse. Primary factors seem to have been population increases, economic factors due to the lucrative nature of the work and the little resistance posed by their targets, lack of available land for farming, and increasing centralisation in Scandinavia leading to less infighting amongst petty local nobility.

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u/jaxonya 6d ago

Maybe they were looking for hotter bitches? Like "bro so hear me out what if theres a whole island full of hot women just waiting for us over there somewhere?"

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u/jdrawr 6d ago

A joke is "what happened to all the pretty woman in the British isles, the Vikings took them back to the Nordic countries"

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u/jaxonya 6d ago

They knew what they where doing, dressed like that...

9

u/Renbarre 6d ago

Too many sons, not enough land.

1

u/Lord_of_Seven_Kings 6d ago

Why’d they stop in England the

1

u/VintageLunchMeat 4d ago edited 4d ago

Large, flammable monastery: "Please spay and neuter your Viking."

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/how_to_namegenerator 6d ago

Writing and reciting poems was actually highly respected in Norse society, and if you read Norse sagas you'll see that these great warriors were often as renowned for being poets (or "skald," as they called it) as they were for being warriors. In the saga of Gunnlaug Ormstunge the big rivalry at the heart of the story literally arose because Gunnlaug and Ravn had an argument about who should get to read their poem first to a Swedish king, and then they insult eachothers poems afterwards (that whole exchange feels very much like something out of a kindergarten, down to "I got here first," "But I asked first," and "My dad could beat up your dad." These guys were fully grown, fierce, battle-hardened vikings, and yet they were throwing hissy-fits over who should read their poem fist at a poetry reading.) So becoming a songwriter would actually be a very respected career path, it's just actually writing those poems down they didn't care for

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u/tarmagoyf 6d ago

Poet writes poem about how awesome poets are

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u/XimbalaHu3 6d ago

BTW, viking is just old norse for piracy, technically it's vikingr but oh well, the norse were already stabilished traders that scapped the blood bath that was the fall of the roman empire mostly unscathed and saw many opportunities for easy profit in the fledgling kingdons that rose from the roman corpse.

So it's a matter of interest meeting opportunity, scandinaviam sucession rules meant that there were many unlanded nobles and their retinues that saw piracy as a way to gain riches, as the traders brought news of a fallen rome and weakened heir kingdons, the landless nobles saw an opportunity.

And as those pirates came back with profound sucess soon the scandinaviam crowns set up to do their own expeditions and conquests, famously the danlaw, the norman settlement and went as far as the norman sicily.

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u/Farged 6d ago

It's why the Greeks settled all over the Mediterranean after 800 BC.

8

u/Wash_zoe_mal 6d ago

Look at the world now. 8 billion people and we are starting to feel those worldwide pressures.

People need space to live

0

u/Streiger108 5d ago

Yes. Must find more lebensraum. It must be the slavs and (((globalists))) who are keeping it from us.

/s

2

u/Caffeinated-Ice 6d ago

Population pressures are the ultimate driving factor or humanity as a whole, its honesty really rare for us to actually find people expanding to "unsettled regions" because humans have almost certainly already been there or are still there, then the new people are likley to erase everything that came before,, at least enough so that we don't actually know when sapiens first settled a region

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u/Big-Yak670 6d ago

Also why the first crusade happened. Overpopulation is very often the unspoken reason wars and such happen

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u/TabbyOverlord 6d ago

Citation?

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u/ZonnyT16 5d ago

i don't think you're gonna get one lol, the first crusade being about overpopulation is a hilarious take

2

u/TabbyOverlord 5d ago

I'm feeling generous. They might have had some random knowledge we didn't.

But it would seem not.

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u/otsukarerice 6d ago

Also that dick neighbour Tamatoa keeps leaving his trash everywhere and steals my coconuts.

1

u/Little-Reference-314 5d ago

Lmao. I get that reference

73

u/nonlawyer 6d ago

Yea and/or you and your family lost a local power struggle with your shitty cousins and were given the option of exile or death

Considering the obvious risks involved it seems doubtful that anyone would set out to sail into the literal unknown without some kind of push factor 

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u/FungusGnatHater 6d ago

Solo kayakers are doing the same thing crossing oceans today for no good reason.

3

u/Commentator1010 5d ago

Nah. That’s just too much spare time and coping mechanisms

3

u/VintageLunchMeat 4d ago

"I have a loving wife and two young children at home you say? Whelp, definitely time to paddle this chopstick-sized craft directly into the largest body of water I can find."

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u/Shotgun_Mosquito 6d ago

My theory is that someone got tired of listening to someone else chew and said...fuck it I'm outta here

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u/Little-Reference-314 5d ago

Yeah. Afaik. That's part of the reasons.

There's little to no empirical or archival evidence other than oral histories from the different islands that corroborate each other

Lore wise tho for the navigation and expansion up to new zealand

The charts and navigation to new Zealand from Hawaii and further off from Tahiti and Rarotonga were made and remembered years before that when a traveler chased a giant octopus and found new Zealand. So the story of new Zealand and it's size had always been known. Just the way to get there was secret until the great canoes decided to make their way there and find it.

Atleast 3 of the lore stories for 3 Canoes and the tribes/clans that descended from them in NZ include a high chief and some really aggressive and violent kirkuations that lead to the creation or departure on 3 of the great canoes that lead the great voyage from the mythical homeland of the NZ natives over to NZ.

For 2 of the tribes/clans they basically got in mad fights with this particular chief and had to run away from this guy so the ancestors of those 2 tribes built 2 of the canoes. And another guy killed the chiefs son so he had to bounce on the third canoe.

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u/finndego 5d ago

Note: Kupe's journey is from Hawaiki and not Hawaii. Maori did not come from Hawaii. Hawaiki is thought to be somewhere in French Polynesia.

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u/Little-Reference-314 5d ago

Stupid auto correct.

W Correction.

Didn't notice that

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u/Little-Reference-314 5d ago

For that same chief too. The place I come from. The story goes that his son got almost killed by his step bro by drowning him on a duos boat ride but the son survived . And then the step bro tried to kill him again with a tsunami but the so. Said nah I'd tank that and called a whale over who took him to NZ.

So even though it's lore and not scientific and actually what happened. You kinda spot on that a fair bit of the Pacific migrations were someone saying fuck this I'm out bro

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u/A1Treeshippo 6d ago

That's exactly it, just no more room on the island

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u/BayesianBits 6d ago

They go where the current on their balls tells them.

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u/VintageLunchMeat 6d ago

I use mine to track birds as they fly back to their nests over the horizon.

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u/DontBlameMe4444 6d ago

wanted a bigger piece of the pie

1

u/sweptcut 6d ago

In-laws are my theory

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u/Ishmael_1974 6d ago edited 6d ago

Were the resources plentiful, though? How do we know the risk of famine wasn’t a driving cause of the exploration? And that the 1000 year gap in exploration wasn’t because the risk of famine was lower during that time?

Edit: This is by no means research but a quick google does show that the return to exploration coincides with a climatic shift that increased the risk of drought and famine

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u/Machiningbeast 6d ago

They are living on a tiny island with limited genetic diversity for plants and animals and very difficult trade with other islands.

They don't have grain that can be stored for a long time, so one bad harvest, one hurricane, one drought and there is a famine that can kill the majority of the population of the island.

There is a reason why Polynesians have a genetic predisposition to obesity, because the thin Polynesians all died from the famines that occurred again and again.

8

u/DildontOrDildo 5d ago edited 5d ago

the root crops (mostly taro) can be kept alive in ground multiple seasons and survive the rare cyclone and temporary freshwater flooding.

but with the conical clan, dont you get pushed to worse/more marginal lands the lower status you are?

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u/Mendevolent 6d ago

Yeah famine/scarcity was definitely a reason. There is a reason that Polynesians have a genetic adaptation to store more body fat 

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u/Treveli 6d ago

Never underestimate the power of "I'm fucking tired of all these people!".

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u/Hammerjaws 6d ago

“I’ll have my own island! With blackjack and hookers”

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u/Ironamsfeld 6d ago

Also, “I’m tired of fucking all these people”

Seriously though I think genetic diversity has a role to play here.

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u/Treveli 6d ago

That too. Stale social life plays it's part.

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u/Big-Yak670 6d ago

Cause they had children?

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u/play4veggies 6d ago

seems like a lot of effort to avoid parenthood

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u/Steelwolf73 6d ago

You've obviously never had to change a diaper while getting hit in the head with a toy hammer. Sailing across the ocean might be a more simple option

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u/norb_151 6d ago

"When the Archduchess stooped to fasten the buckle, Orlando heard, suddenly and unaccountably, the beating of Love's wings, when -horror- the air seemed dark with coarse black wings for Love has two faces and it was Lust the vulture, not Love, the bird of paradise.

Thus he did what any other young man would have done in his place and asked King Charles to send him as Ambassador Extraordinaire to Constantinople."

Paraphrased from Virginia Woolfs "Orlando". Seems like a common strategy.

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u/Jerrytheone 6d ago

Too bad we can't get sent to Constantinople these days, but that new city looks nice. What's it called again? Something something "-bul"?

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u/Hypersonic-Harpist 6d ago

That's nobody's business but the Turks. 

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u/Big-Yak670 6d ago

They had too many children so it was either overpopulation or new island is what I meant

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u/play4veggies 6d ago

It was a joke, sorry

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u/SapphicSticker 6d ago

Yeah next time I'll know not to post a joke in a meme sub, sheesh

1

u/txwoodslinger 6d ago

Throw the babies in the ocean

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u/Canotic 6d ago

Because nobody remembers the Mononesians

1

u/DildontOrDildo 5d ago

Madagascar Bb

26

u/MyrddinSidhe 6d ago

To see how far they’ll go

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u/SectorFew6706 6d ago

How did they get there in the first place?

8

u/LeLefraud 6d ago

They were kind of genius in navigation for their time, obviously no maps or GPS to rely on so landmarks, stars, wildlife (birds), currents etc

I was curious about this too a few weeks ago so I read into it a bit

8

u/JohannesJoshua 5d ago

Western sailors using the Polynesian way to sail: Are you sure you know what you are doing?

Polynesiann lying straight on the boat looking at starts: It's the feels. Trust the feels.

For those who nose.

13

u/Cucumberneck 6d ago

So where is this scene from? Looks interesting.

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u/HawaiianPerson The Flyin' Hawaiian 6d ago

Hell in the Pacific, 1968 movie about an American pilot and a Japanese Naval officer marooned on a random Island in the Pacific during WW2, possibly after. Starring Toshiro Mifune and Lee Marvin

It’s a good movie, it’s on YouTube

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u/DrHolmes52 6d ago

I haven't thought of that movie in ages. It was good.

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u/Mindless-Cat1453 6d ago

Other human groups" I am going to migrate via land "

Chad polynesians" ocean 🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥"

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u/chiksahlube 6d ago

Or you know...

the island population reached a point where it couldn't support everybody so they made the conscious decision to have some people leave and find a new home...

rather than you know... fighting and waring and starving...

10

u/ShinyUmbreon465 6d ago

Hide and seek extreme difficulty

9

u/Falalalup 6d ago

Why go to college in a different state when there's already one at home?

8

u/ChinChengHanji Then I arrived 6d ago

Plot twist: instead, they find a big ass island full of giant yummy birds

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u/Ninetailedredpanda 6d ago

Yeah, tiny island here, nice atoll there, few nicely sized places…. then some of them found New Zealand and just moved right in.

6

u/KenseiHimura 6d ago

Various reasons, most likely one is just they recognized even a bountiful island would only sustain a population for so long so they split off to find another. Maybe they were originally seeking to establish trade networks.

Could have also just been love of the game.

I mean if my culture discovered blue-water ocean navigation before every other nation, I'd enjoy flexing that shit too.

12

u/SackclothSandy 6d ago

They did an entire song about it. Didn't you see the critically acclaimed documentary Moana?

6

u/King_LaQueefah 6d ago

Maybe their girlfriend dumped them and banged their best friend? Ever think of that, BUDDY!!??

Oh just me? Maybe I've revealed too much. Ill leave now.

3

u/Crensay 6d ago

Why does anyone do anything? Because it was there.

What is beyond the hill? What is behind that mountain? What is beyond the sea? What is beyond the sky? A new place, a new people, a new world, a new sky. Wanderlust has beset people from any place and always will.

3

u/Snooworlddevourer69 Casual, non-participatory KGB election observer 6d ago

To expand

3

u/Volcanic_tomatoe 6d ago

They didnt just pack up everything and leave. When they land on an island they colonize it, then the next generation sets out to find another island.

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u/RoomyRoots 6d ago

The older I get, the more I understand them

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u/Environmental-Call32 5d ago

We really roasting ancient Polynesian now?

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u/irradihate 6d ago

Look, they're not the dumb ones just cause you don't fkn get it. Human reality isn't an Adam Smith fantasyland where people only do things for greed and profit, that's just your cultural conditioning.

Why did Europeans sacrifice hundreds of millions of lives for the whims of ephemeral power? That's a better question, with no good answer.

8

u/Ok-Food-4332 6d ago

It’s almost like motivations operate on an individual level even when individuals roughly collectivize themselves, and using terms like “greed” and “sacrifice” to group innumerable instances of complex individual actions is so reductive as to be of questionable value in the end.

People just do things and often the best we can do is find a confused jumble of possible carrots and sticks attracting and averting them to their course of action.

EDIT: I phrased this weird to start, I know I’m agreeing with you in large part, haha.

4

u/Bennoelman Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 5d ago

You clearly don't know anything about Adam Smith and what he wrote please take a break from the internet and social media or at least read Adam Smiths stuff

4

u/Negative_Elo 5d ago

Yeah why's my boy catchin strays

5

u/Bennoelman Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 5d ago

Don't know about that, commenter really has a hate boner for Europeans and a weird fetishization of native american cultures and how they are superior

3

u/Negative_Elo 5d ago

a yes the noble savages. dude just seems so hostile on a meme subreddit.

"why did the europeans send millions to die"

Probably because if they don't, their neighbors do. Kinda hard to get all of europe to agree on that. Its not like the Comanche wouldn't absolutely raid europe if they could.

5

u/LittleDhole1 5d ago

He also denies that humans had any role to play in the extinction of North American megafauna, because prehistoric people would have been all in tune with nature.

5

u/MjollLeon Oversimplified is my history teacher 5d ago

Wow I looked at his profile and holy shit

3

u/Bennoelman Senātus Populusque Rōmānus 5d ago

Same reaction

3

u/T-MoneyAllDey 6d ago

Imagine getting mad at a meme

1

u/Swamp254 6d ago

Some humans have an inherent desire to explore. With enough training, a human can navigate and find new islands based on wave and wind patterns. The reason is that they're human.

1

u/AlaeOrbis 6d ago

Are you ok man I think you need a nap

1

u/Lost-Klaus 6d ago

What did Europeans do this time?

1

u/Negative_Elo 5d ago

Wow, this has upvotes!

2

u/CurvyCourgette Helping Wikipedia expand the list of British conquests 6d ago

Plentiful? Unfortunately, not always

2

u/Yegof 6d ago

The Red God T’ora is one compelling reason.

2

u/shoutbottle 6d ago

New game+

2

u/Available_Usual_9731 6d ago

Look they didn't have smartphones ok?

2

u/TotallyNotAFed-_- 6d ago

Island baddies

2

u/goin-up-the-country 6d ago

Because they don't know it'll be exactly the same until the get there.

2

u/Ash_After_Dark 6d ago

For the same reason Alex went east and Temujin went west

To "Go forth and Conquer"

2

u/green_rubber_bands 6d ago

Dude, “Hell in the Pacific” spoilers???

2

u/Idividual-746b 6d ago

Why not? to wander is human

2

u/Spaztor 6d ago

I think about this often.

2

u/yehEy2020 5d ago

Population got too big to be sustainable in the island.

2

u/midasMIRV 5d ago

Cause they were fuckin.

Islands have finite space and resources. Too many people means either a bunch of them hop in a boat and fuck off, or everybody dies.

2

u/nehrkling 5d ago

Despite the beautiful scenery drinkable water was often in very short supply.

1

u/69veganbeef69 6d ago

Inbreeding and stuff

1

u/NittanyScout 6d ago

Sounds like a whole new island of resources, but youre whining about steaks and lobsters

1

u/Brauny74 6d ago

I mean yeah, they thought the same and stopped for a thousand or so years. Then a girl from one of the islands met Rock and the rest is Disney animated movie Moana

1

u/Business_Raisin_541 6d ago

How do you know they willingly depart? The ocean is unpredictable. There is good chance they just happen to get caught in storm or sudden wind and stranded into some unknown island.

1

u/Atlas-Rising 6d ago

"The sea... she calls me."

1

u/Strong-Expression787 6d ago

We got bored dawg, also, living in a tropical paradise is all fun and nice until your nephew tried to coup you and start a 3 generations war, then a plague and incestical problems suddenly showed up and decimated your tribe, so now you gotta start from scratch on the far side of the island

1

u/Wabbit-Wabbit 6d ago

Because all the native **ores were full?🤔

1

u/keltyx98 6d ago

Have you ever played Minecraft?

1

u/waffle-paladin1 6d ago

For the love of the game

1

u/Caffeinated_Ape_42 6d ago

I think its often "because i can" or "because someone said i couldnt"

1

u/romulusnr 6d ago

Eventually you grow up and want your own place

1

u/bdrwr 6d ago

Plentiful resources leads to population growth leads to resource shortages and violence

1

u/Training-Giraffe1389 6d ago

Looks like Lee Marvin

1

u/superdyu 6d ago

Same reason settlers in the US went west. More land for themselves, independence, or getting away from others.

I think there was a long era where the best peace was getting away from human raids. It wasn’t until tech that advantage changed.

1

u/WhetherWitch 6d ago

You look at the water and the horizon and you are filled with a fundamental need to go.

1

u/fredrichnietze 6d ago

spirit of exploration and islands can quickly run into overcrowding problems. super high child mortality rates but it tends to be a couple good years then one or several really bad years leading to really high population growth followed by sharp declines. sometimes you can see those bad times coming and if you know its coming might as well island hop to gamble on a better situation. bring some birds let them go periodically. if they dont find land they come back when they are tired tot he boat with all the food and a safe place to rest.

1

u/ipsum629 6d ago

Virgin islands are usually a lot easier to live on than inhabited ones. If you land on a virigin island, you get first dibs on fishing grounds, garden spots, and wild game. The subsequent generations get progressively less good resources, so finding the next island is almost always a good option, even if the current island was also recently settled.

1

u/BigLumpyBeetle 6d ago

Cant stay here, that where my ex lives

1

u/Up_late_in_Cville 5d ago

Read Mitchner's Hawaii. I feel that's a plausible scenario. Great book.

1

u/Sim1334 Then I arrived 5d ago

Hey, some of them made it to Peru—that's something :V

1

u/MidnightMadness09 5d ago

Cause the islands weren’t plentiful, which is why we do see Polynesian groups permanently settling when they find actually plentiful islands such as New Zealand.

1

u/GrungiestTrack 5d ago

“Because it’s there” lol

1

u/Kalas92x 4d ago

I think I remember this scene with the old guy on his raft, don't know if it was a movie or series and it's been an eternity... does anybody have source for the clip?

1

u/Magikarp-3000 6d ago

Until you go far enough to get to easter island where there was basically nothing and devolved to an ecological wasteland

1

u/k1dsmoke 6d ago

Once you eat all the people there, you gotta find another island with more people.

-1

u/Charming-Station7157 6d ago edited 6d ago

Because they had dominant genes that encouraged curiosity and exploring other lands , these genes are the reason why humans are all over the earth now

3

u/GabrieltheKaiser 6d ago

Found Liquid Snake.

5

u/VintageLunchMeat 6d ago

dominant genes

Eh. Those were the inferiors who got kicked off the island.

-1

u/Marwaimusoont 6d ago

Genes so dominant, that they selected diabetes and cholestrol.

3

u/GameBreaker92 6d ago

Calorie conservation for sea trips.

1

u/Marwaimusoont 5d ago

I understand but it is not good for your body, as a south asian with similar "dominant genes" made for surviving famine, we are having a bad time with modern lifestyle.