We always knew that!..................
Posted on 04/24/2023 12:29:34 PM PDT by Rummyfan
These expert navigators sailed thousands of nautical miles long before other societies.
The 2016 animated family film Moana brought the long-told story of Polynesian seafarers (along with some incredibly catchy tunes) to a much wider worldwide audience. Now, geochemical analysis is confirming the oral history of ancient Polynesia’s incredible sailors in a new study published April 21 in the journal Science Advances.
Long before Europeans arrived, Polynesian wayfinders sailed to islands across the central Pacific in canoes, and the stories of their adventures have survived largely through oral history. There has been limited material evidence supporting these accounts of Polynesian societies from distant islands interacting with one another.
“Pacific islanders were able to travel over very long distances and did so in every region of the Pacific. Polynesian peoples settled hundreds of islands from Papua New Guinea to Easter Island (Rapa Nui),” study co-author and French National Centre for Scientific Research archaeologist Aymeric Hermann tells PopSci. “The extent of long distance voyages in an Ocean as vast as the Pacific, and several centuries before any other society could really master seafaring, is pretty amazing.”
Details of the westward expansions to a group of islands west of Polynesia called the Polynesian Outliers have been even more unclear. Indigenous cultures vary across the Pacific’s islands, but oral traditions and shared cultural items indicate that there could have been contact and exchanging of goods across long distances.
(Excerpt) Read more at popsci.com ...
Stars would show them their position, but it would not tell them about islands.
Birds would tell them that an island was accessible, since they don’t go far from land. It’s also possible that the ocean was lower as well, allowing less distances to travel land masses.
I also think it was a bit of a crapshoot and not everybody survived their attempt at finding new islands. Anybody on islands are descendants of the lucky ones.
We always knew that!..................
Ginger the last one alive.
Eventually you will find the warmer current ....
That’s a blast from the past ...
Thank you for that.
Thanks Rummyfan. BTW, all, Fingerprints is enclosed in single quote at the original.
I’ve been to Bora Bora and Huahini. The native Polynesians were wonderfully smart, funny and honest and the males looked better than the women. Fine with me as I was a young woman then. Great dancers, too. Taught me how to do
a dance called “Tamure”.
I was on assignment for a travel magazine and somehow left my valuable camera there. Got a call a few days after I got back home from a stewardess on airline that flew me there. She had my camera, which a Polynesian had found and given to her.
I a sailboat sailor.
I live in Hawaii.
This mythology of their
fantastic exploits are
pure BS.
There is only one star
that does not appear to move
in the Northern hemisphere.
Even the Southern cross “moves”.
Navigating by stars without a set reference
doesn’t work. Micronesians weren’t that abled.
They followed birds,
pure and simple.
It is all tribal oral BS.
to extort money from us.
Full disclosure I was a specialist in navigation
in the military.
Aside from the illusion we perceive from the Mercator Projection. The tip of South America is actually not at all very far from where they had already landed. In Easter Island, New Zealand, and the Islands East of New Zealand.
https://www.popsci.com/uploads/2023/04/21/PolynesianVoyageMap.png
https://i.redd.it/znbl8z0tqcla1.jpg
My own theory is that there were more islands between Samoa and Hawaii in the 1,000 AD - 1,200 AD period than there are today.
Today, the last large island between Samoa and Hawaii is about 1,000 miles away from Hawaii.
Traveling northeast to Hawaii may have involved favorable currents. But, how do you get back and tell people about Hawaii unless you sail or paddle back?
Sailing would involve tools and materials that were not readily available on unpopulated islands.
Paddling would involve huge requirements for fresh water, protein, and energy food.
But, when you get to 1,000 miles of open ocean, those areas are usually vast fish deserts, and there is no fresh water unless it rains.
The Hawaiian archipelago is more than 300 miles across, so it was probably quite rare that someone would sail or paddle right by the islands.
But, I am still skeptical that they could go straight to Hawaii without charts and calendars, or if they had clouds, rain, or rough water.
Several years ago, I recall reading that there are no "fossil" examples of Pacific island boats from a thousand years ago.
Anyone know if that is still true?
Not just the stars. They made stick-and-bead charts based on wave patterns that they were able to use when out of sight of land.
Stars maybe but what they did know was currents which are visible on the open ocean if you know how to look,
How Sticks and Shell Charts Became a Sophisticated System ... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-sticks-and-shell-charts-became-sophisticated-system-navigation-180954018/
actually old news in the sense that the Jomon of Japan were navigating the Black Current in 14,000 BC.
Seafaring birds.
The Pink Panther has a pump up one no food bill or a dirty coat.
Also, clouds form over islands and can be spotted from quite long distances.
A book I read (actually it was in audiobook format) goes into significant detail and claims that DNA shows the Polynesians originated in Taiwan.
Maybe the Taiwanese and Polynesians both originated in the same place?
Can’t remember how the aboriginal Australians fit in to that arrangement.
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