It is also common in Micronesia and parts of Near Oceania,
2,
3,
5,
12,
13,
14,
15,
16,
17,
18 where it is not necessarily restricted to Austronesian speaking populations, but also occurs in some rare Papuan speaking groups.
2,
18,
19 The motif is much less frequent in Island Southeast Asia, although it has been found sporadically in both central and eastern Indonesia.
4,
6,
7,
11,
20,
21 In Madagascar – the western edge of the Austronesian expansion – the Polynesian motif reaches a frequency of around 20%,
8,
9,
20,
22thus leading to proposals that the island was settled by an Indonesian population, which later colonized the Pacific Islands,
8,
22 or even more speculatively, by direct migration from Polynesia itself