Polynesian navigation
Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometres of the
Navigators travelled to small inhabited islands using wayfinding techniques and knowledge passed by oral tradition from master to apprentice, often in the form of song. Generally, each island maintained a
Both wayfinding techniques and outrigger canoe construction methods have been kept as guild secrets, but in the modern revival of these skills, they are being recorded and published.
History
Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of
This culture, known as
In accordance with Polynesian oral tradition, the geography of Polynesian navigation pathways is said to resemble the geometric qualities of an octopus with head centred on
Specific chronology of the discovery and settlement of specific island groups within Eastern and Central Polynesia is hotly debated among archeologists, but a generally accepted timeline puts the initial settlement of the
The archeological record supports oral histories of the first peopling of region including both the timing and geographical origins of Polynesian society.[22][23]
Polynesian navigation relies heavily on constant observation and memorization. Navigators have to memorize where they have sailed from in order to know where they are. The sun was the main guide for navigators because they could follow its exact points as it rose and set. Once the sun had set they would use the rising and setting points of the stars. When there were no stars because of a cloudy night or during daylight, a navigator would use the winds and swells as guides.[24]
Through constant observation, navigators were able to detect changes in the speed of their canoes, their heading, and the time of day or night. Polynesian navigators thus employed a wide range of techniques including the use of the stars, the movement of ocean currents and wave patterns, the patterns of bioluminescence that indicated the direction in which islands were located, the air and sea interference patterns caused by islands and atolls, the flight of birds, the winds and the weather.[25][26]
Bird observation
Certain seabirds such as the white tern and noddy tern fly out to sea in the morning to hunt fish, then return to land at night. Navigators seeking land sail opposite the birds' path in the morning and with them at night, especially relying on large groups of birds, and keeping in mind changes during nesting season.[27]
It is also believed that Polynesians, like many seafaring peoples, kept shore-sighting birds. One theory is that voyagers took a frigatebird (Fregata) with them. This bird's feathers become drenched and useless if it lands on water, so voyagers would release it when they thought they were close to land, and would follow it if it did not return to the canoe.[25]
The positions of the stars helped guide Polynesian voyages. Stars, as opposed to planets, hold fixed celestial positions year-round, changing only their rising time with the seasons. Each star has a specific declination, and can give a bearing for navigation as it rises or sets. Polynesian voyagers would set a heading by a star near the horizon, switching to a new one once the first rose too high. A specific sequence of stars would be memorized for each route.[5][31][27] The Polynesians also took measurements of stellar elevation to determine their latitude. The latitudes of specific islands were also known, and the technique of "sailing down the latitude" was used.[5][31] That is, Polynesians navigated by the stars through knowledge of when particular stars, as they rotated through the night sky, would pass over the island to which the voyagers were sailing. Also knowledge that the movement of stars over different islands followed a similar pattern (that is, all the islands had a similar relationship to the night sky) provided the navigators with a sense of latitude, so that they could sail with the prevailing wind, before turning east or west to reach the island that was their destination.[4]
Some
For navigators near the equator, celestial navigation is simplified, given that the whole celestial sphere is exposed. Any star that passes through the zenith (overhead) moves along the celestial equator, the basis of the equatorial coordinate system.[citation needed]
Swell
The Polynesians also used wave and swell formations to navigate. Many of the habitable areas of the Pacific Ocean are groups of islands (or atolls) in chains hundreds of kilometres long. Island chains have predictable effects on waves and currents. Navigators who lived within a group of islands would learn the effect various islands had on the swell shape, direction, and motion, and would have been able to correct their path accordingly. Even when they arrived in the vicinity of an unfamiliar chain of islands, they may have been able to detect signs similar to those of their home.[5]
Once they had arrived fairly close to a destination island, they would have been able to pinpoint its location by sightings of land-based birds, certain cloud formations, as well as the reflections of shallow water made on the undersides of clouds. It is thought that the Polynesian navigators may have measured sailing time between islands in "canoe-days".[25]
The energy transferred from the wind to the sea produces wind waves. The waves that are created when the energy travels down away from the source area (like ripples) are known as swell. When the winds are strong at the source area, the swell is larger. The longer the wind blows, the longer the swell lasts. Because the swells of the ocean can remain consistent for days, navigators relied on them to carry their canoe in a straight line from one house (or point) on the star compass to the opposite house of the same name. Navigators were not always able to see stars; because of this, they relied on the swells of the ocean. Swell patterns are a much more reliable method of navigation than waves, which are determined by the local winds.[5][31] Swells move in a straight direction which makes it easier for the navigator to determine whether the canoe is heading in the correct direction.[35]
Clouds, reflections off clouds, and the colour of the sky
Polynesian navigators could identify the clouds that resulted from the white sand of coral atolls reflecting heat into the sky. Subtle differences in the colour of the sky also could be recognised as resulting from the presence of lagoons or shallow waters, as deep water was a poor reflector of light while the lighter colour of the water of lagoons and shallow waters could be identified in the reflection in the sky.[5]
In Eastern Polynesia, navigators sailing from Tahiti to the Tuamotus would sail directly east towards Anaa atoll, which has a shallow lagoon that reflects a faint green colour on to the clouds above the atoll. If the navigator drifted off their course, they could correct their course when they sighted the reflection of the lagoon in the clouds in the distance.[36]
Te lapa
Dr. David Lewis was one of the first academics, along with Marianne George, to document an unexplained light phenomenon. Te lapa is a burst of light in a straight line occurring on, or just below the water surface, and originates from islands. It is used by Polynesians to reorient themselves out at sea or to find new islands.[37]
There is currently no evidence of historic Polynesian navigators using navigational devices on board vessels.[38] However, the Micronesian people of the Marshall Islands have a history of using a stick chart onshore, to serve as spatial representations of islands and the conditions around them. Micronesian navigators created charts using the rib of coconut leaves attached to a square frame, with the curvature and meeting-points of the coconut ribs indicating the wave motion that was the result of islands standing in the path of the prevailing wind and the run of the waves.[5][31]
When European navigators first learnt of the navigational skills of Polynesians, they compared them to their own methods, which relied on, among other things, the
Extent of voyaging
On
However, in February 1778, Cook recorded his impressions of the dispersal and settlement of Polynesian people across the Pacific ocean in favorable terms:[44]
How shall we account for this nation's having spread itself, in so many detached islands, so widely disjoined from each other in every quarter of the Pacific Ocean? We find it, from New Zealand, in the South, as far as the Sandwich Islands (Hawaiʻi), to the North, and, in another direction, from Easter Island, to the Hebrides (Vanuatu); that is, over an extent of sixty degrees of latitude, or twelve hundred leagues north and south, and eighty-three degrees of longitude, or sixteen hundred and sixty leagues east and west! How much farther in either direction its colonies reach is not known; but what we know already; in consequence of this and our former voyage, warrants our pronouncing it to be, though perhaps not the most numerous, certainly by far the most extensive, nation upon earth.
Subantarctic and Antarctica
There is academic debate on the furthest southern extent of Polynesian expansion.
The islands of New Zealand, along with a series of outlying islands, have been labelled 'South Polynesia' by New Zealand archaeologist Atholl Anderson.[45] These islands include the Kermadec Islands, the Chatham Islands, the Auckland Islands and Norfolk Island. In each of these islands there is radiocarbon dating evidence of visits from Polynesians by 1500.[45] The material evidence of Polynesian visits to at least one of the subantarctic islands to the south of New Zealand consists of the remains of a settlement. This evidence from Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands has been radiocarbon dated back to the 13th Century.[46][47][48][49]
Descriptions of a shard of early Polynesian pottery buried on the
Oral history describes Ui-te-Rangiora, around the year 650, leading a fleet of Waka Tīwai south until they reached, "a place of bitter cold where rock-like structures rose from a solid sea".[52] The brief description might match the Ross Ice Shelf or possibly the Antarctic mainland,[53] but may be a description of icebergs surrounded by sea ice found in the Southern Ocean.[54][55] The account also describes snow.
Pre-Columbian contact with the Americas
In the mid-20th century,
The
A 2007 study published in the
A published, apparently pre-Columbian, Chilean specimen and six pre-European Polynesian specimens also cluster with the same European/Indian subcontinental/Southeast Asian sequences, providing no support for a Polynesian introduction of chickens to South America. In contrast, sequences from two archaeological sites on Easter Island group with an uncommon haplogroup from Indonesia, Japan, and China and may represent a genetic signature of an early Polynesian dispersal. Modeling of the potential marine carbon contribution to the Chilean archaeological specimen casts further doubt on claims for pre-Columbian chickens, and definitive proof will require further analyses of ancient DNA sequences and radiocarbon and stable isotope data from archaeological excavations within both Chile and Polynesia.
However, in a later study, the original authors extended and elaborated their findings, concluding:[64]
This comprehensive approach demonstrates that the examination of modern chicken DNA sequences does not contribute to our understanding of the origins of Chile's earliest chickens. Interpretations based on poorly sourced and documented modern chicken populations, divorced from the archeological and historical evidence, do not withstand scrutiny. Instead, this expanded account will confirm the pre-Columbian age of the El Arenal remains and lend support to our original hypothesis that their appearance in South America is most likely due to Polynesian contact with the Americas in prehistory.
In 2005, a linguist and an archeologist proposed a theory of contact between
Polynesian contact with the prehispanic
A Mangarevan legend tells of Anua Matua who sailed in south-west direction reaching southernmost South America.[70]
Post-colonial research history
Knowledge of the traditional Polynesian methods of navigation was widely lost after contact with and colonization by Europeans. This caused debates over the reasons for the presence of the Polynesians in such isolated and scattered parts of the Pacific. According to Andrew Sharp, the explorer Captain James Cook, already familiar with Charles de Brosses's accounts of large groups of Pacific islanders who were driven off course in storms and ended up hundreds of miles away with no idea where they were, encountered in the course of one of his own voyages a castaway group of Tahitians who had become lost at sea in a gale and blown 1000 miles away to the island of Atiu. Cook wrote that this incident "will serve to explain, better than the thousand conjectures of speculative reasoners, how the detached parts of the earth, and, in particular, how the South Seas, may have been peopled".[73]
By the late 19th century to the early 20th century, a more generous view of Polynesian navigation had come into favor, creating a much romanticized view of their seamanship, canoes, and navigational expertise. Late 19th- and early 20th-century writers such as Abraham Fornander and Percy Smith told of heroic Polynesians migrating in great coordinated fleets from Asia far and wide into present-day Polynesia.[57]
Another view was presented by Andrew Sharp, who challenged the "heroic vision" hypothesis, asserting instead that Polynesian maritime expertise was severely limited in the field of exploration, and that as a result, the settlement of Polynesia had been the result of luck, random island sightings, and drifting, rather than as organized voyages of colonization. Thereafter, the oral knowledge passed down for generations allowed for eventual mastery of traveling between known locations.[74] Sharp's reassessment caused a huge amount of controversy and led to a stalemate between the romantic and the skeptical views.[57]
Re-creation of voyages
Anthropologist David Lewis sailed his catamaran from Tahiti to New Zealand, via Rarotonga using
Anthropologist and historian
In 1973, Ben Finney established the Polynesian Voyaging Society to test the contentious question of how Polynesians found their islands. The team claimed to be able to replicate ancient Hawaiian double-hulled canoes capable of sailing across the ocean using strictly traditional voyaging techniques.[79] In 1980, a Hawaiian named Nainoa Thompson invented a new method of non-instrument navigation (called the "modern Hawaiian wayfinding system"), enabling him to complete the voyage from Hawaiʻi to Tahiti and back. In 1987, a Māori named Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell and his mentor Francis Cowan sailed from Tahiti to New Zealand without instruments in the waka Hawaiki-nui.[80]
In 1978, the Hōkūleʻa was capsized en route to Tahiti. Eddie Aikau, a world champion surfer, and part of the crew, attempted to paddle his surfboard to the nearest island to find help. However, Aikau was never seen again. The crew was later rescued regardless of the fact that Aikau didn't make it to the nearest island.[81]
In New Zealand, a leading Māori navigator and ship builder was Hector Busby, who was also inspired and influenced by Nainoa Thompson and Hokulea's voyage there in 1985.[82]
In 2008, an expedition starting in the Philippines sailed two modern
In 2010, O Tahiti Nui Freedom, an outrigger sailing canoe, retraced the path of the migration from Tahiti to China via Cooks, Tonga, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomons, PNG, Palau, Philippines in 123 days.[84]
In 2013, a modern, non-instrument voyage was launched called Mālama Honua. It traveled across the world leaving Hilo, Hawaii, initially. This was not a re-creation of a known historical voyage. The spirit of the voyage was to spread the message of conservation. In fact, "mālama honua" means, roughly, to care for Earth, in Hawaiian. The journey was made on two vessels: the Hōkūle'a and the Hikianalia. Nainoa Thompson was on the crew.[85]
See also
Notes
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- ^ Clark, Liesl (15 February 2000). "Polynesia's Genius Navigators". PBS. Retrieved 17 November 2016.
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- ^ a b Holmes, Lowell Don (1 June 1955). "Island Migrations (1): The Polynesian Navigators Followed a Unique Plan". XXV(11) Pacific Islands Monthly. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Holmes, Lowell Don (1 August 1955). "Island Migrations (2): Birds and Sea Currents Aided Canoe Navigators". XXVI(1) Pacific Islands Monthly. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
- ISSN 1047-482X.
- ISSN 0022-3344.
- JSTOR 27849718.
- ^ Howe, K. R (2006), Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors – the discovery and settlement of the Pacific, Albany, Auckland: David Bateman, pp. 92–98
- PMID 11069104
- ^ Bellwood 1987, pp. 45–65.
- ^ "Lapita culture: ancestors of Polynesians, Micronesians, and some coastal areas of Melanesia". Originalpeople.org. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
- JSTOR 20706311.
- ^ E. Tetahiotupa, Au gré des vents et des courants (Éditions des Mers Australes ) 2009.
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- ISBN 0-8248-3213-2.
- ^ Bellwood 1987, pp. 29, 54.
- ^ Bayard, D. T. (1976). The Cultural Relationships of the Polynesian Outliers. Otago University, Studies in Prehistoric Anthropology, Vol. 9.
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- ^ Thompson, Nainoa. "On Wayfinding". Polynesian Voyaging Society. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
- ^ a b c d Gatty 1958.
- ^ Lewis, David (1974). "Wind, Wave, Star, and Bird". National Geographic. 146 (6): 747–754.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8248-0229-5.
- ^ "Be Your Own Navigator," Smithsonian Libraries Unbound, 11 February 2016.
- ^ Harold Gatty (1943). The Raft Book: Lore of the Sea and Sky. New York: George Grady Press.
- ^ "Star Compasses". Polynesian Voyaging Society. Archived from the original on 24 October 2011.
- ^ a b c d e Holmes, Lowell Don (1 September 1955). "Island Migrations (3): Navigation was an Exact Science for Leaders". XXVI(2) Pacific Islands Monthly. Retrieved 1 October 2021.
- ^ Harold Gatty (1958). Nature Is Your Guide, p. 45
- ^ Star Compass diagrams with translations
- Texas A & M University
- ISBN 978-1-4736-1520-5.
- ^ "Navigators of Eastern Polynesia". VII(8) Pacific Islands Monthly. 23 March 1937. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
- ^ George, Marianne (2011). "Polynesian Navigation and Te Lapa-"The Flashing"". Time and Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture. 5 (2): 135–174. Retrieved 23 October 2022.
- ISBN 978-1-86953-625-1.
- ISBN 978-1-4738-2559-8.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-520-26114-3.
- ^ Druett, Joan (1987). Tupaia – The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator. New Zealand: Random House. pp. 226–227.
- ^ Druett, Joan (1987). Tupaia – The Remarkable Story of Captain Cook's Polynesian Navigator. New Zealand: Random House. pp. 218–233.
- ISBN 978-1-84511-483-1.
- ^ Crowe, p236
- ^ ISBN 978-0-908321-53-7.)
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link - ^ O'Connor, Tom Polynesians in the Southern Ocean: Occupation of the Auckland Islands in Prehistory in New Zealand Geographic 69 (September–October 2004): 6–8
- ^ Anderson, Atholl, & Gerard R. O'Regan "To the Final Shore: Prehistoric Colonisation of the Subantarctic Islands in South Polynesia" in Australian Archaeologist: Collected Papers in Honour of Jim Allen Canberra: Australian National University, 2000. 440–454.
- ^ Anderson, Atholl, & Gerard R. O'Regan The Polynesian Archaeology of the Subantarctic Islands: An Initial Report on Enderby Island Southern Margins Project Report. Dunedin: Ngai Tahu Development Report, 1999
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- ^ "Nga-Iwi-o-Aotea". Te Ao Hou (59): 43. 1967.
- ^ "Captain Fairchild to the Secretary, Marine Department, Wellington". Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives, 1886 Session I, H-24 Page 6.
- ^ "Expedition Cruises Fathom Expeditions Custom Cruise". Archived from the original on 23 June 2010. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
- ^ "All About Antarctica". Archived from the original on 4 September 2011. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
- ^ "The Left Coaster: freeze frame". Retrieved 2 March 2016.
- ^ "Ui-te-Rangiora". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
- ^ Sharp 1963, pp. 122–128.
- ^ a b c Finney 1963, p. 5.
- ^ Van Tilburg, Jo Anne (1994). Easter Island: Archaeology, Ecology and Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
- ^ Montenegro, A.; et al. "Modeling the prehistoric arrival of the sweet potato in Polynesia" (PDF). Journal of Archaeological Science. University of Victoria. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 June 2011. Retrieved 6 September 2011.
- ^ Whipps, Heather (4 June 2007), "Chicken Bones Suggest Polynesians Found Americas Before Columbus", Live Science, retrieved 5 June 2007.
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- ^ a b Ramírez-Aliaga, José-Miguel (2010). "The Polynesian-Mapuche connection: Soft and Hard Evidence and New Ideas". Rapa Nui Journal. 24 (1): 29–33.
- ^ a b "Rapa Nui" (in Spanish). Archived from the original on 6 June 2007. Retrieved 5 June 2007.
- Australian National University Press.
- ^ Sharp 1963, p. 16.
- ^ Sharp 1963.
- ^ Lewis 1994.
- ^ Lewis, David (1974). "Wind, Wave, Star, and Bird". National Geographic. 146 (6): 747–754, 771–778.
- ^ Finney 1963, pp. 6–9.
- Hokulea.
- ^ Finney, Ben. "Voyaging into Polynesia's Past The Founding of the Polynesian Voyaging Society". Hokule'a. Retrieved 11 April 2018.
- ^ "Hawaiki-nui". New Zealand Maritime Museum. Retrieved 13 November 2021.
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- ^ "Profile: Hekenukumai (Hector) Busby". Toi Māori Aotearoa. Archived from the original on 11 October 2014. Retrieved 12 October 2014.
- ^ Hympendahl, Klaus. "Lapita Voyage – The first expedition following the migration route of the ancient Polynesians". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 2 March 2016.
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References
- Bellwood, Peter (1987). The Polynesians – Prehistory of an Island People. Thames and Hudson. pp. 45–65. ISBN 978-0-500-27450-7.
- Crowe, Andrew (2018). Pathway of the Birds: The Voyaging Achievements of the Maori and Their Polynesian Ancestors. David Bateman Ltd. ISBN 978-1-86953-961-0.
- Downes, Lawrence (16 July 2010), "Star Man", New York Times.
- Finney, Ben R (1963), "New, Non-Armchair Research", in Finney, Ben R (ed.), Pacific Navigation and Voyaging, The Polynesian Society.
- Finney, Ben R, ed. (1976), Pacific Navigation and Voyaging, The Polynesian Society.
- Gatty, Harold (1943), The Raft Book: Lore of Sea and Sky, U.S. Air Force.
- Gatty, Harold (1958), Finding Your Way Without Map or Compass, Dover Publications, ISBN 978-0-486-40613-8.
- ISBN 978-0-14-301867-4.
- Lewis, David(1963), "A Return Voyage Between Puluwat and Saipan Using Micronesian Navigational Techniques", in Finney, Ben R (ed.), Pacific Navigation and Voyaging, The Polynesian Society.
- Lewis, David (1994), University of Hawaii Press.
- Lusby, et al. (2009/2010) "Navigation and Discovery in the Polynesian Oceanic Empire" Hydrographic Journal Nos. 131, 132, 134.
- Sharp, Andrew (1963), Ancient Voyagers in Polynesia, Longman Paul Ltd..
- O'Connor, M.R. (2019). Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans Navigate the World. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-09696-8..
- Sutton, Douglas G., ed. (1994), The Origins of the First New Zealanders, Auckland University Press.
External links
- Kawaharada, Dennis. "Wayfinding: Modern Methods and Techniques of Non-Instrument Navigation, Based on Pacific Traditions". Wayfinding Strategies and Tactics. Honolulu, HI, USA: Polynesian Voyaging Society. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- "Wayfinding". Honolulu, HI, USA: Polynesian Voyaging Society. Archived from the original on 17 September 2009. Retrieved 26 November 2012.
- Exploratorium. "Never Lost | Polynesian Navigation" (Flash). San Francisco, CA, USA: Exploratorium. Retrieved 26 November 2012. An interactive presentation with English and Hawaiian language options.