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Polynesian navigation is a system of navigation used by Polynesians to make long voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean. Navigators travel to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice, often in the form of song. In order to locate directions at various times of day and year, Polynesian navigators memorize important facts: the motion of specific stars, so where they would rise and set on the horizon of the ocean; weather and the seasons of travel; wildlife species (which gather at particular positions); the direction, size and, speed of ocean waves; colors of the sea and sky, especially how clouds would cluster at the locations of some islands; and angles for approaching harbors.
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A projection of the Polynesian triangle on the globe. Between about 3000 and 1000 BC speakers of Austronesian languages spread through island South-East Asia – almost certainly starting out from Taiwan, as tribes whose natives were thought to have previously arrived about from mainland South China about 8000 years ago – into the edges of western Micronesia and on into Melanesia. In the archaeological record there are well-defined traces of this expansion which allow the path it took to be followed and dated with a degree of certainty. In the mid-2nd millennium BC a distinctive culture appeared suddenly in north-west Melanesia, in the Bismarck Archipelago, the chain of islands forming a great arch from New Britain to the Admiralty Islands. This culture, known as Lapita, stands out in the Melanesian archeological record, with its large permanent villages on beach terraces along the coasts.
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Particularly characteristic of the Lapita culture is the making of pottery, including a great many vessels of varied shapes, some distinguished by fine patterns and motifs pressed into the clay. Within a mere three or four centuries between about 1300 and 900 BC, the Lapita culture spread 6000 km further to the east from the Bismarck Archipelago, until it reached as far as Tonga and Samoa. In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed. The pattern of settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread out from the Samoan Islands into eastern Polynesia - the Marquesas, the Society Islands, the Hawaiian Islands and Easter Island; and south to New Zealand. The pattern of settlement also extended to the north of Samoa to the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone to migration into the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia
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Knowledge of the traditional Polynesian methods of navigation was largely lost after contact with and colonization by Europeans. This left the problem of accounting 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.
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 centuries writers such as Abraham Fornander and Stephenson Percy Smith told of heroic Polynesians migrating in great coordinated fleets from Asia far and wide into present-day Polynesia.
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 centuries writers such as Abraham Fornander and Stephenson Percy Smith told of heroic Polynesians migrating in great coordinated fleets from Asia far and wide into present-day Polynesia.
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The building and testing of canoes inspired by traditional designs, the harnessing of knowledge from skilled Micronesian, as well as voyages using stellar navigation, allowed practical conclusions about the seaworthiness and handling capabilities of traditional Polynesian canoes and allowed a better understanding of the navigational methods that were likely to have been used by the Polynesians and of how they, as people, were adapted to seafaring.
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The peoples of the Pacific, including Micronesians and Polynesians, developed navigating by the stars into a fine art. They had names for over a hundred and fifty stars. A navigator would have known where and when a given star rose and set, as well as which islands it passed directly over. Thus Polynesian navigators would have then been able to sail toward the star they knew to be over their destination, and as it moved westward with time they would then set their course by the succeeding star which would have then moved over the target island.
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Simple yet accurate charts made of sticks have long been used by the Polynesians and Micronesians to map islands, currents, and sea swells. These charts came in different types, and the information was closely guarded as secrets.
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The stick charts are a significant contribution to the history of cartography because they represent a system of mapping ocean swells, which was never before accomplished. They also use different materials from those common in other parts of the world. They are an indication that ancient maps may have looked very different, and encoded different features from the earth, than the maps we use today.
Navigators focused on effects of islands in blocking swells and generating counterswells to some degree, but they mainly concentrated on refraction of swells as they came in contact with undersea slopes of islands and the bending of swells around islands as they interacted with swells coming from opposite directions. |
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The charts, unlike traditional maps, were studied and memorized prior to a voyage and were not consulted during a trip, as compared to traditional navigation techniques where consultation of a map is frequent and points and courses are plotted out both before and during navigation. Navigators used their senses and memory to guide them on voyages by crouching down or lying prone in the canoe to feel how the canoe was being pitched and rolled by underlying swells.
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In this region, the distinctive Polynesian culture developed. The pattern of settlement that is believed to have occurred is that the Polynesians spread out from the Samoan Islands into eastern Polynesia - the Marquesas, the Society Islands, the Hawaiian Islands and Easter Island; and south to New Zealand. The pattern of settlement also extended to the north of Samoa to the Tuvaluan atolls, with Tuvalu providing a stepping stone to migration into the Polynesian Outlier communities in Melanesia and Micronesia.
Archaeological and DNA research is still in progress and no one knows for sure how long ago the Polynesians reached the Eastern Pacific or possibly the Western Hemisphere. |
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Scientists think that long-distance Polynesian voyaging followed the seasonal paths of birds. There are some references in their oral traditions to the flight of birds and some say that there were range marks onshore pointing to distant islands in line with these flyways. A voyage from Tahiti, the Tuamotus or the Cook Islands to New Zealand might have followed the migration of the Long-tailed Cuckoo - just as the voyage from Tahiti to Hawaiʻi would coincide with the track of the Pacific Golden Plover.
It is also believed that Polynesians employed shore-sighting birds as did many seafaring peoples. These birds refuse to land on the water as their feathers will become waterlogged making it impossible to fly. When the voyagers thought they were close to land they may have released the bird, which would either fly towards land or else return to the canoe.
It is also believed that Polynesians employed shore-sighting birds as did many seafaring peoples. These birds refuse to land on the water as their feathers will become waterlogged making it impossible to fly. When the voyagers thought they were close to land they may have released the bird, which would either fly towards land or else return to the canoe.
From Wikipedia
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There is some material evidence of Polynesian visits to some of the sub-Antarctic islands to the south of New Zealand, which are outside Polynesia proper. A shard of pottery has been found in the Antipodes Islands, and is now in the Te Papa museum in Wellington, and there are also remains of a Polynesian settlement dating back to the 13th century on Enderby Island in the Auckland Islands.
The realm of legend suggests that Ui-te-Rangiora around the year 650, led a fleet of Waka Tīwai south until they reached, "a place of bitter cold where rock-like structures rose from a solid sea", The brief description appears to match the Ross Ice Shelf or possibly the Antarctic mainland, but may just be a description of icebergs and Pack Ice found in the Southern Ocean. |
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