Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part three of our series about ancient
Speaker 1: Pacific island navigation. In the previous couple of episodes, of course,
Speaker 1: if you haven't listened to those, you should go back
Speaker 1: and check those out first so you can understand what
Speaker 1: we're talking about today. But in the last couple of
Speaker 1: episodes we talked about a lot of these fascinating mysteries
Speaker 1: about the population of the Pacific Islands and and how
Speaker 1: those islands were first colonized by humans, how people found them,
Speaker 1: and then how people traveled between them once they knew
Speaker 1: where all the islands were. Because, of course, this is
Speaker 1: a huge area of the surface of the Earth that
Speaker 1: is covered almost entirely by water, and only polka dotted
Speaker 1: with these tiny islands here and there. And yet somehow,
Speaker 1: without charts, without instruments like a like a compass um,
Speaker 1: the navigators of the Pacific Islands were able to reach
Speaker 1: the other islands in in the surrounding areas with this
Speaker 1: amazing level of accuracy. So in the first episode we
Speaker 1: talked about some of the history theories about the history
Speaker 1: of the settlement of these islands, and then in the
Speaker 1: last episode we talked about techniques that have been documented
Speaker 1: that allowed master navigators to locate and and sail to
Speaker 1: islands in this in this vast ocean with enough accuracy
Speaker 1: that they could do so reliably over and over again.
Speaker 1: And what those techniques without charts and modern instruments would
Speaker 1: have been. Yeah, this this whole realm of environmental navigation,
Speaker 1: which I just want to drive home again when we're
Speaker 1: talking about this, we're talking not about some sort of
Speaker 1: innate art or something that is just uh, this one
Speaker 1: acquires by you know, being out in the water or
Speaker 1: being uh, you know, growing up on the ocean, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Now, this was this was a science
Speaker 1: that was learned that was passed down from generation to
Speaker 1: generation across these these different Pacific cultures. That's right. One
Speaker 1: of the main sources we've been referring to is a
Speaker 1: very important book in the history of of studying these
Speaker 1: techniques that was by a scholar named David Lewis, and
Speaker 1: it was published with the University of Hawaii Press in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. It's called We the Navigators, The Ancient
Speaker 1: Art of Land Finding in the Pacific. And one thing
Speaker 1: that's really really cool about this book is that Lewis
Speaker 1: sailed well. He he interviewed many master navigators of different
Speaker 1: Pacific islands in Micronesia and Polynesia, but he also sailed
Speaker 1: with several navigators including UH, two very prominent navigators named
Speaker 1: Hippur and Tevak, from whom he learned a whole lot
Speaker 1: about these these techniques firsthand at sea, like they were
Speaker 1: navigating his boat, which was a boat called the Ispiorn
Speaker 1: and UH, and so we got to see these techniques firsthand.
Speaker 1: And so in the last episode we talked mostly about
Speaker 1: techniques for navigation on the open sea. Direction finding, so
Speaker 1: especially using the stars to to orient towards your targets
Speaker 1: and UH, and then using backup methods as well, such
Speaker 1: as like using the sun during the daytime and navigating
Speaker 1: by directionally reliable C swells, which was especially astounding to me,
Speaker 1: like the idea that you, you know, you could learn
Speaker 1: how to feel for certain patterns of C swells that
Speaker 1: reliably come from a certain direction and then use that
Speaker 1: to know which way you're heading. UM, and then also,
Speaker 1: of course, you would have to pair these direction finding
Speaker 1: techniques on the open sea with the system of dead reckoning,
Speaker 1: which is knowing how far you have traveled based on
Speaker 1: your rate of travel, your starting position, and your direction
Speaker 1: of travel and so and so. That would be a
Speaker 1: way of sort of record keeping your journey mentally as
Speaker 1: you're going along the way, even though you don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have new environmental clues to choose from. But today we
Speaker 1: wanted to get mainly into the question of land finding.
Speaker 1: So a traditional Pacific navigator has used open c navigation
Speaker 1: techniques like celestial orientation and dead reckoning to get roughly
Speaker 1: to the vicinity of an island. Once you are nearing
Speaker 1: your destination, how do you actually find the land? Yeah,
Speaker 1: because as we discussed in the previous episode, you don't
Speaker 1: want to you know, be sailing in the right direction
Speaker 1: to be in the vicinity of the island and then
Speaker 1: not be able to see it to again again not
Speaker 1: be close enough to pick up on the very obvious
Speaker 1: cues that you were near the island, and have to
Speaker 1: pick up on those more subtle cues that would require
Speaker 1: training and expertise to notice. Right, I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the biggest dangers actually for a Pacific island sailor is missing,
Speaker 1: your target is going past the island you're trying to
Speaker 1: get to without realizing it. Yeah, I mean, in a
Speaker 1: very very loose sense, it's like depending on say, your
Speaker 1: your GPS navigational system, which we refer to previously, you know,
Speaker 1: using that to get to the immediate area, like the
Speaker 1: block where the where the or is that you're trying
Speaker 1: to go a story you've never been to before. But
Speaker 1: then once you're there, the GPS is only gonna help
Speaker 1: you so much. Then you're gonna have to pinpoint the sign,
Speaker 1: figure out which storefront it is, figure out your parking, etcetera.
Speaker 1: There are a whole new set of problems that your
Speaker 1: mirror navigational system, your GPS, is not able to help
Speaker 1: you with. Right. And so, one thing that's very interesting
Speaker 1: that David Lewis explores in his book is what he
Speaker 1: calls the idea of expanded target landfall. And what that
Speaker 1: means is that by using a suite of land finding techniques,
Speaker 1: you can essentially extend the radius of land a certain
Speaker 1: reliable distance out into the ocean. And I'll talk about
Speaker 1: the distances as we go on, but there's a certain
Speaker 1: reliable distance out into the ocean that you can just
Speaker 1: expect to be able to detect nearby land even if
Speaker 1: you can't see it. And if you measure land, including
Speaker 1: those radii out into the ocean beyond the shore and
Speaker 1: h and especially beyond sort of like reefs and submerged
Speaker 1: or or almost submerged a toolls nearby, you can actually
Speaker 1: greatly expand the percent of the Pacific Ocean that is
Speaker 1: taken up by by by land range. Basically, so you
Speaker 1: can expand your target from these tiny islands surrounded mostly
Speaker 1: by water to basically a block of islands with mostly
Speaker 1: or totally overlapping ranges of land detectable water. Does that
Speaker 1: make sense? Yes, yeah, basically increases the the the footprint
Speaker 1: of the island, like the the detectable footprint of the island. Right. So, so,
Speaker 1: of course the direction finding techniques like celestial navigation are
Speaker 1: extremely important and getting you towards your your target, but
Speaker 1: also the expanded target landfall is just as important, if
Speaker 1: not more important. I mean, I guess you can't really
Speaker 1: have one without the other. It is also extremely important
Speaker 1: because you know, there's only so accurate you can get
Speaker 1: with steering by stars, you still need to be able
Speaker 1: to correct course and find the land once you're close enough.
Speaker 1: And so, how far exactly can you expect to find
Speaker 1: land from out in the ocean. Well, it does very
Speaker 1: a lot, depending on local conditions. But Lewis cites a
Speaker 1: scholar named Frankel who estimates that on average, land can
Speaker 1: usually be detected from about thirty miles in any direction,
Speaker 1: and Louis essentially agrees with this number. Uh, And then
Speaker 1: he writes this quote. If we draw circles with thirty
Speaker 1: miles radii around each Pacific island, we find that the
Speaker 1: circles overlap over vast areas, giving rise to solid blocks
Speaker 1: i e. Islands separated by not more than sixty miles
Speaker 1: passing between which a canoe could not be more than
Speaker 1: thirty miles offshore. So, with these expanded target landfall techniques,
Speaker 1: the problem of finding these tiny islands in the past
Speaker 1: ocean actually is much more manageable. It's reducible more to
Speaker 1: finding these blocks or screens of islands within a certain angle.
Speaker 1: You know a certain angle of direction from your starting position,
Speaker 1: So it means that what would otherwise be a sprinkle
Speaker 1: of islands becomes a clump of islands, yes, which there's
Speaker 1: some there. You actually you shared a wonderful map here
Speaker 1: that that that demonstrates this, and it's really it's really
Speaker 1: quite impressive because you can see it making a huge
Speaker 1: amount of difference, uh, is you're traveling, you know, between
Speaker 1: these these islands, uh potentially even charting some of these
Speaker 1: these more distant journeys. That's right. So if you're looking
Speaker 1: at it from a map that includes expanded target landfall
Speaker 1: as sort of a black circle around the island, what
Speaker 1: would have been a smattering of of little tiny dots
Speaker 1: instead turns into a big clump of black circles that
Speaker 1: they're all overlapping each other. So this really does help
Speaker 1: with the problem. But of course you you could easily
Speaker 1: once again pass between these islands without actually being able
Speaker 1: to see them visually. So you need to be able
Speaker 1: to know what to look for. And again one of
Speaker 1: the things that stressed, especially in we the navigators, is
Speaker 1: that the degree of what they call screening the screening
Speaker 1: of islands rather than individual island targets. So you would
Speaker 1: aim for a screen like a line of islands that
Speaker 1: are all overlapping within land finding range of one another.
Speaker 1: That the the degree of screening of an island or
Speaker 1: island group target was the number one safety concern when
Speaker 1: making a journey there, So more screening more overlapping of
Speaker 1: the expanded targets is safer, and less screening where there
Speaker 1: are gaps between the expanded targets is much more dangerous
Speaker 1: because again of the danger of unknowingly passing your target.
Speaker 1: But I guess we should talk about what are the
Speaker 1: actual landfall signs? What are the environmental signs that can
Speaker 1: be used to detect a land from a long distance away.
Speaker 1: I guess we should start with the one that is
Speaker 1: the most obvious. Maybe this one doesn't actually need to
Speaker 1: be said, but there are a couple of things about
Speaker 1: it that are worth sorting out. Actually, So the most
Speaker 1: obvious one is high ground. Right. In some cases your
Speaker 1: target island is very tall and it can be seen
Speaker 1: from very far away. So, for example, Tahiti reaches elevations
Speaker 1: of something like seventy feet and for this reason, the
Speaker 1: land itself can sometimes be seen from as far as
Speaker 1: eighty miles away. That that's a real good distance. And likewise,
Speaker 1: Hawaii that can be seen from extremely far away. It
Speaker 1: contains volcanoes, and rising land mass that sometimes up up
Speaker 1: to like thirteen thousand feet, but not every island is
Speaker 1: tall like this. Many Pacific islands lie more or less
Speaker 1: at sea level, with nothing much taller than the height
Speaker 1: of a palm tree, and you can easily miss these.
Speaker 1: Standard navigational lore holds that on these low islands, visibility
Speaker 1: is about ten miles, given the presence of coconut palms,
Speaker 1: which grow to about of any five feet high, so
Speaker 1: at about ten miles you should be able to see
Speaker 1: the tallest of the coconut palms. It's interesting. I was
Speaker 1: reading about about this and it reminded me of our
Speaker 1: episode on on the Font of Morgana, where we talked
Speaker 1: about mirages and about how in some cases there were
Speaker 1: islands that we even put on maps that turned out
Speaker 1: to not be real. They were based on on mirrages.
Speaker 1: And the reverse of that is also true. There are
Speaker 1: islands that um certainly as as European powers were coming
Speaker 1: into play and trying to map everything out, there were
Speaker 1: islands that were that were known to be to exist
Speaker 1: by by the natives, but various Europeans would would have
Speaker 1: would decide, well, this was probably a mirage. We don't have.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly where it is, but it would
Speaker 1: turn out it was actually there. Yeah, and it's funny
Speaker 1: you should bring up the Fedamorghana episode because this land
Speaker 1: finding technique is way down the list in terms of
Speaker 1: of how commonly it was used in the level of
Speaker 1: priori it's given. But one of the things mentioned in
Speaker 1: this book is that land loom, the optical illusion of
Speaker 1: being able to see the land in a in a
Speaker 1: superior mirage projected up above the horizon, even though the
Speaker 1: land is not visible itself from where you are. This
Speaker 1: actually was sometimes used by some Pacific Island navigators, specifically
Speaker 1: Lewis Sites navigators from the Gilbert's using this one. But
Speaker 1: coming back to the idea of vantage points and high ground,
Speaker 1: there is actually a pretty reliable mathematical equation you can
Speaker 1: use for determining the visibility of an object over the
Speaker 1: horizon at sea uh and and it goes like this,
Speaker 1: So you take the square root of the height of
Speaker 1: the object you're looking for in feet and and so
Speaker 1: this is this method will be unit dependent, but the
Speaker 1: square root of the height of the object and feet
Speaker 1: so that could be a you know, a seventy five
Speaker 1: foot tall palm tree, or it could be a mountaintop
Speaker 1: or a lighthouse, whatever that is. And then you add
Speaker 1: that to the square route of the observer's height, so
Speaker 1: that would also be in feet. If you're you know,
Speaker 1: if your eyes are five feet above the water, that's
Speaker 1: five feet, or if you're sitting down in a low canoe,
Speaker 1: it's probably even lower. And then you you add those
Speaker 1: together and then you multiply by I've seen different numbers.
Speaker 1: Actually I found a navigational website that suggested multiplying that
Speaker 1: number by one point one seven. Lewis gives gives the
Speaker 1: idea to multiply by one point one five. But whichever
Speaker 1: way you do, you'll probably get pretty close to the
Speaker 1: same answer, and this will give you the distance away
Speaker 1: in miles that an object can usually be seen over
Speaker 1: the horizon. But that made me think about the height
Speaker 1: of the observer, which makes me wonder about the land
Speaker 1: finding virtues of different watercraft, right, because they're obviously different
Speaker 1: kinds of watercraft. People make these journeys and sometimes there
Speaker 1: in they could be in outrigger canoes or they could
Speaker 1: be in a double hulled traditional navigational vessel that would
Speaker 1: have a much more raised form in the middle with
Speaker 1: even a cabin that I guess you could technically get
Speaker 1: on top of. I don't know how, I don't know
Speaker 1: what all of the techniques with with ancient Pacific watercraft
Speaker 1: would be for getting higher up as a vantage point.
Speaker 1: But that seems like that that could give you an
Speaker 1: advantage as well, right, because of course they would not
Speaker 1: have the advantage that that you would have with agin
Speaker 1: a crow's nest lookout in a in a western sailing vessel,
Speaker 1: like you know, a large scale ocean voyaging ship. That's right.
Speaker 1: But uh, fortunately, these these specific navigators had lots of
Speaker 1: other environmental cues they could look for. And these cues
Speaker 1: are very important because even with taller islands, so even
Speaker 1: if you're trying to get, you know, to a place
Speaker 1: that's mountainous, you're trying to get to Tahiti or Hawaii
Speaker 1: or something, environmental conditions can render these less visible. So
Speaker 1: Louis gives the example of mountains, the mountains of Mangareva
Speaker 1: and truck which should be visible based on their height
Speaker 1: from like forty five miles away, but he says that
Speaker 1: in his case, when he was once approaching in in
Speaker 1: the boat, they were unable to see the peaks of
Speaker 1: these islands because of overcast, and so their first visual
Speaker 1: sighting was actually of the surrounding barrier reef rather than
Speaker 1: of the island itself. Now, as we go on to
Speaker 1: discuss more of these land finding techniques, it's important to
Speaker 1: note that they vary in both directions, meaning that the
Speaker 1: land finding techniques very in preference of individual navigators and
Speaker 1: navigator cultures and in availability at target. So there are
Speaker 1: some like, uh, there's some traditions of land finding lore
Speaker 1: that place more emphasis on one or the other. But
Speaker 1: also you need to have the backup knowledge because you're
Speaker 1: not always going to be able to find all of
Speaker 1: these when you look for them. Yeah, again, this is
Speaker 1: a suite of tools that one that a navigator would use.
Speaker 1: This is a toolbox of different techniques, and you're not
Speaker 1: gonna want to depend on just one of them. Now,
Speaker 1: you're gonna use several of them, and some of them
Speaker 1: are gonna better than others. But when used in congress,
Speaker 1: you can get the train navigator can get really positive results. Now,
Speaker 1: there's one thing that Lewis mentions in this book which
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting, which is a sort of counter
Speaker 1: example to uh. The thing we've talked about a couple
Speaker 1: a couple of times, which is that he says, you know,
Speaker 1: none of the navigators he spoke to or traveled with
Speaker 1: ever ever appealed to the idea of a sixth sense.
Speaker 1: Right you were mentioning this earlier, it's not just intuition
Speaker 1: about being at sea. When they were making navigational decisions,
Speaker 1: they could always point to specific markers. They could say
Speaker 1: the reason I'm going this way is because of this.
Speaker 1: It's something that was in the environment that could be
Speaker 1: pointed out and understood. So it wasn't just a gut feeling.
Speaker 1: But one place in which he does say intuition seemed
Speaker 1: to come in was in the calculus of how much
Speaker 1: to wait different types of observations of of land finding signs.
Speaker 1: So navigators might get close to an island and you'd
Speaker 1: see one kind of sign and then another one, and
Speaker 1: they'd be trying to decide which way to go based
Speaker 1: on maybe different conflicting signals, or or what what the
Speaker 1: sort of sum total or average of the evidence was.
Speaker 1: And that did seem to be more based on a
Speaker 1: gut feeling after surveying all the evidence available to them.
Speaker 1: So I thought that was an interesting counterpoint. Thank thank
Speaker 1: thank so. The first big sign to mension, I think
Speaker 1: would be birds. Uh. There's actually a part where where
Speaker 1: Lewis sites a navigator named Tita who says that who
Speaker 1: is quoted at length on this. He says birds are
Speaker 1: the navigator's very best friends. Birds are useful up to
Speaker 1: twice the site range of an island from a canoe.
Speaker 1: And he also says the site range of land is
Speaker 1: about ten miles and that of birds twenty. The birds
Speaker 1: which are the most significant are turns and noddies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've read that. Yeah. A lot of it comes down
Speaker 1: to familiarity with bird species. It's not just, of course
Speaker 1: birds in general, but specific knowledge of how are out
Speaker 1: to see a particular bird species will typically go So
Speaker 1: if it's a if it's a sea bird, for instance,
Speaker 1: the distance could be somewhere in the neighborhood of a
Speaker 1: hundred kilometers, which is about sixty two point one miles. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, again, it's just going to depend on the
Speaker 1: exact variety of bird, uh, while other varieties of bird
Speaker 1: are going to stay much closer to land. That's right.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you need to look not just for birds
Speaker 1: in general, but for specific species of birds, because there are,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, pelagic species like petrolls and sheer waters
Speaker 1: that will just not lead you to land with any reliability.
Speaker 1: If you follow them, you may end up cruising out
Speaker 1: into the deep and not coming back. But once you
Speaker 1: get within about thirty to fifty miles of shore, you
Speaker 1: will start to see some familiar species that are somewhat reliable.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you'll see booby birds uh and
Speaker 1: sometimes predatory frigate birds. At this distance of thirty to
Speaker 1: fifty miles, and then even closer, within about twenty to
Speaker 1: twenty five miles of the nearest a toll, you will
Speaker 1: get what what Louis says are quote mixed flocks of
Speaker 1: white turns and noddies that will be encountered busily searching
Speaker 1: for fish. And once again, they show no more interest
Speaker 1: in directing the wayfarer than a busy New York policeman.
Speaker 1: Uh So, so there's some further deduction you have to do.
Speaker 1: It's not just like you see the birds and then
Speaker 1: you immediately know what's up. If you see booby birds,
Speaker 1: frigate birds, turns and naughties, you know you're close, but
Speaker 1: you can't really use their flight paths and behavior throughout
Speaker 1: the daytime to know which direction land lies. So what
Speaker 1: do you do. Well, you have to use time of day.
Speaker 1: These species roost on land and they have to return
Speaker 1: to solid ground daily, and so the time of day
Speaker 1: tells you a lot. They typically fly out to their
Speaker 1: fishing shoals from land in the early morning, and then
Speaker 1: they return to land in the evening. So to read
Speaker 1: a passage from from Louis here he writes quote towards evening,
Speaker 1: the frigate birds, for example, will be seen to abandon
Speaker 1: their leisurely patrolling, climb even higher, and set off in
Speaker 1: one direction, probably homing by sight. About the same time,
Speaker 1: the boobies will tire of their inquisitive inspections and fly
Speaker 1: low and arrows straight for the horizon. As the noddies depart,
Speaker 1: they will weave slightly in and out between the crests
Speaker 1: of larger waves, while the turns will be flying a
Speaker 1: little above them, but all will be following a very
Speaker 1: exact path towards their home island. So once you are
Speaker 1: within range of land, and you've gotten there again by
Speaker 1: the process of of of open sea navigation, often by
Speaker 1: the stars, and uh, and then these backup methods together
Speaker 1: with dead reckoning, you get within range of the island,
Speaker 1: you start to see certain bird species and you know
Speaker 1: which species to look for and what time of day
Speaker 1: to follow them. And if you see the birds all
Speaker 1: trending in the same direction around sundown, then you know.
Speaker 1: There are also a few stories here and there about
Speaker 1: islands where some sea going birds have and domesticated, you know,
Speaker 1: like fed and trained. But these stories seemed kind of
Speaker 1: vague and uncertain, but it is at least an interesting
Speaker 1: possibility to consider, whether there's much to it or not.
Speaker 1: Like what if an island culture could essentially train frigate
Speaker 1: birds to be the walmart greeters of the island. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and almost like living lighthouses in some respects. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the behavior of birds can factor and apart from just uh,
Speaker 1: you know, flying back like booby, birds are considered useful
Speaker 1: in that they will not only fly towards land at
Speaker 1: the close of day, they will often take an active
Speaker 1: interest in approaching boats and they will try to land
Speaker 1: on them, like land on the rigging or something, before
Speaker 1: eventually flying off toward home in the evening. Now, I
Speaker 1: know a lot of you out there probably watched The
Speaker 1: Simpsons or have watched The Simpsons in the past, and
Speaker 1: you're probably thinking about the scene in the episode Boy
Speaker 1: Scouts in the Hood. Uh uh, this is the the
Speaker 1: episode and what let's see. I'm trying to remember exactly
Speaker 1: how it went. And did they get lost at sea? Well,
Speaker 1: first they get lost at her which then results and
Speaker 1: then being lost at sea and they're trying to get
Speaker 1: back to land and then what do they see in
Speaker 1: the sky? They see a seagull. Is this the one
Speaker 1: that starts with Bart wanting a knife but to get
Speaker 1: a knife, Yeah, and he has to he has to
Speaker 1: read the book don't do what Donny Don't does. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it ends up with them doing a boy Scout river race,
Speaker 1: and so they're lost at sea and what I don't
Speaker 1: remember what happens with the seagull. I think Ned declare.
Speaker 1: Ned is with them, and Ned looks up and he
Speaker 1: sees that there's a seagull and he declares that they're saved. Um,
Speaker 1: but then it is it is. Then it is brought
Speaker 1: up that seagulls only go out to sea to die,
Speaker 1: and then the seagull dies, so they're still lost. Uh.
Speaker 1: Now I was thinking about this in connection with with
Speaker 1: with some of these islands, particularly with the Hawaiian Islands.
Speaker 1: And this is a fun fun fact of the various
Speaker 1: species of seagulls out there, and there are many. Seagulls
Speaker 1: are not one species, they're multiple. You'll find some of
Speaker 1: them in the Hawaiian Islands. But a great mini goals
Speaker 1: cannot survive in Hawaii because the islands lack the sort
Speaker 1: of shallow coastal scavenging waters that one finds in continental settings.
Speaker 1: Some of these goals do wind up in Hawaii, but
Speaker 1: only to starve to death because they do not have
Speaker 1: the environment they need to survive. Well, that actually ties
Speaker 1: into the next thing I wanted to mention, which is
Speaker 1: that everything we've talked about so far is in the
Speaker 1: context of land finding by way of local birds in
Speaker 1: a near radius to an island, you know they live
Speaker 1: on the island, and once you see them, you know
Speaker 1: you're near the island. You can follow them home. But
Speaker 1: there's another use of bird navigation entirely, which is the
Speaker 1: possibility that some ancient Pacific islanders deduced the presence of
Speaker 1: previously unknown islands by observing the migratory patterns of land birds.
Speaker 1: Stories like this exist in some island sailor lore, so
Speaker 1: it seems quite reasonable to assume that that some islands
Speaker 1: were indeed discovered this way. But ultimately it's it's historical
Speaker 1: speculation and we don't know for sure, but that that
Speaker 1: does seemed like a very plausible guess as to how
Speaker 1: some of these islands were found when they had never
Speaker 1: been seen by humans before. I should also add that
Speaker 1: above the various birds you could site that would give
Speaker 1: you an indication that you were near land, the Dodo
Speaker 1: the absolute best. Once you've once you've spotted the Dodo,
Speaker 1: you're good to go. But by the way, if you
Speaker 1: find yourself in Hawaii, if you find yourself on the
Speaker 1: island of Oahu, I highly recommend going to the Bishop
Speaker 1: Museum there. Um it is. It is a wonderful museum
Speaker 1: that covers so much about Polynesian culture and uh in
Speaker 1: Hawaiian history, and it covers some of what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. There there there's stuff about the canoes that
Speaker 1: were used, uh the navigational techniques that were used, and
Speaker 1: and so forth. So I'm sure the Bishop Museum will
Speaker 1: come up again, but I highly recommend it you if
Speaker 1: you if you visit the islands, you you kind of
Speaker 1: owe it to yourself to go to the Bishop Museum.
Speaker 1: All right, So we've talked about high ground, we've talked
Speaker 1: about birds. What's next. Okay? The next one is is
Speaker 1: fascinating to me and and it is the use of
Speaker 1: clouds to find nearby land. So you might think, well,
Speaker 1: how could you use that? I mean, there are clouds
Speaker 1: over the open ocean. What what would clouds tell you?
Speaker 1: But it turns out they can tell you quite a lot. There.
Speaker 1: There is this tradition among Pacific navigators of looking for
Speaker 1: your target by what's known as land clouds, patterns of
Speaker 1: cloud formations that are consistent with the presence of land
Speaker 1: rather than open water. So how would clouds appearing over
Speaker 1: an island be any different than clouds appearing anywhere else. Well, well,
Speaker 1: they're actually a number of signs that are used. So
Speaker 1: navigators claim first of all, that clouds move more quickly
Speaker 1: over open water and more slowly over land, almost as
Speaker 1: if they appear to become stuck over islands that are
Speaker 1: hidden beyond the horizon. But there are also a number
Speaker 1: of difficult to describe characteristics that that these navigators look for.
Speaker 1: Having to do with the formation, appearance, and behavior of
Speaker 1: clouds over dry land, and one example is the the
Speaker 1: telltale shapes, specifically the eyebrows and the V shape. Both
Speaker 1: of these are referred to, for example, by a navigator
Speaker 1: named Aberra, that is that was extensively interviewed by by
Speaker 1: David Lewis in his book, and so according to the
Speaker 1: navigational lore of Aberra, uh the eyebrows meaning these I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess I can't describe them any better than that.
Speaker 1: Clouds that look like eyebrows appear in the sky over
Speaker 1: where an island would be. So if they are eyebrows,
Speaker 1: you'd imagine the island down below the horizon is sort
Speaker 1: of where the noses or maybe where the lips are,
Speaker 1: so it's between the two eyebrows. And these eyebrow looking
Speaker 1: clouds are more common when the weather is calm and
Speaker 1: there are no other clouds, whereas a different formation, known
Speaker 1: as the V shape the V shaped column is present
Speaker 1: over islands when there is wind and when there are
Speaker 1: other clouds, and the V shape basically the vertex of
Speaker 1: it at the bottom points down to where the island is.
Speaker 1: But even more fascinating than that, to me is that experience.
Speaker 1: Navigators mentioned that there are cues rooted in the color
Speaker 1: of clouds. Clouds hovering over an island below the horizon
Speaker 1: will tend to have different colors and levels of brightness
Speaker 1: than clouds floating over the ocean, and apparently a lot
Speaker 1: of this has to do with the actual reflection of
Speaker 1: the colors of the land lying below the cloud. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is really neat. I was reading about this specifically
Speaker 1: as it concerns lagoons. Lagoons being shallow bodies of water, uh,
Speaker 1: the open ocean being deep water, and therefore the lagoon
Speaker 1: water as reflected in the cloud, will be a lighter
Speaker 1: shade of blue. Um so, so yeah, that's so. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not like a mirror. You're not gonna be like, oh, look,
Speaker 1: I can see the reflection of the entire island to
Speaker 1: which we are going. No, but to the arained ie
Speaker 1: you would be able to see the difference in the color,
Speaker 1: like there's a lighter blue reflected in the clouds, that
Speaker 1: that must be the blue of the lagoons on the island.
Speaker 1: Though I should of course also stressed this, like a
Speaker 1: lot of the things we're discussing here we should add
Speaker 1: the caveat under the right conditions exactly, So none of
Speaker 1: these signs we're talking about are always observable. Uh And
Speaker 1: and Lewis stresses this a lot that it requires consistent,
Speaker 1: focused attention in looking for all of the available cues
Speaker 1: that you know about. So looking for a few minutes
Speaker 1: you are quite likely to see nothing to get no cues.
Speaker 1: But if an experience navigator pays close attention for several hours,
Speaker 1: usually at least one type of land sign will manifest. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And just to get a sense of what the the
Speaker 1: the effects of reflected color from land on the clouds
Speaker 1: would be, like, I want to read a section from
Speaker 1: Lewis here where he describes some examples. So uh, he says,
Speaker 1: quote the colors that begin to appear closer to land
Speaker 1: very with the makeup of the island. There are three
Speaker 1: kinds of island with core responding clouds. Tita says. Above
Speaker 1: lagoon islands, the cloud roof tends to be greenish. Over
Speaker 1: extensive areas of white sand or surf, the cloud or
Speaker 1: a portion of it will be brighter, more white than
Speaker 1: the rest. The clouds above a wooded green island will
Speaker 1: be darker than their neighbors. Abera referred to a pink
Speaker 1: tinge over reefs and green above lagoons. Re We likewise
Speaker 1: said that lagoon islands reflect green, and ones without lagoons
Speaker 1: a reddish color. Islands with no lagoons, like Couria said Yotibata,
Speaker 1: reflect a dark color that must be distinguished from rain cloud,
Speaker 1: which appears very similar. Islands with big stretches of dry
Speaker 1: reef or mangroves have bright colored clouds above them. And
Speaker 1: then he mentions that given the fact that all of
Speaker 1: the stuff he's just been saying comes from different interviews
Speaker 1: with different navigators from different islands, and with four separate
Speaker 1: interpreters transcribing what they were saying, Uh, the fact that
Speaker 1: they're so consistent in what they say about the colors
Speaker 1: reflected in the clouds is pretty amazing. Now, there's another
Speaker 1: very important thing that I'm not going to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time on, just because we discussed it somewhat
Speaker 1: in our previous episode and now in the last episode,
Speaker 1: we talked about feeling for swells in the sea as
Speaker 1: a way of direction finding, but also a navigator can
Speaker 1: feel for the reflection refraction and interference with swells with
Speaker 1: no notion swells to detect that land is nearby. And
Speaker 1: Lewis goes into deep detail on this practice in his book,
Speaker 1: But essentially, it's it's a similar to feeling to direction
Speaker 1: finding with the help of swells, except feeling for interruptions
Speaker 1: and swells and reflections of swells from known land masses.
Speaker 1: But there's one last thing I wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: here that is really interesting and almost kind of creepy,
Speaker 1: especially because it is to some degree still mysterious, though
Speaker 1: there there's some ideas about what it might be. Uh.
Speaker 1: So we've talked, you know, at length before about bioluminescence
Speaker 1: in the ocean. You know, a kind of that is
Speaker 1: a regular, profuse light in the water from organisms like
Speaker 1: bioluminescent plankton and uh and Lewis recounts in the book
Speaker 1: that some navigators say that bioluminescence in the water just
Speaker 1: doesn't tell you much useful. Other sources seem to think
Speaker 1: it increases when near near land or a reef. But
Speaker 1: in any case, it's important to distinguish regular bioluminescence in
Speaker 1: the water from this next land sign, which is fascinating
Speaker 1: and It's what David Lewis calls deep phosphorescence, but it
Speaker 1: is also known as ta lapa spelled t E space
Speaker 1: l a p A. The navigator Tevak calls this calls
Speaker 1: it underwater lightning. It's also described by another navigator as
Speaker 1: ulo a tahi or the glory of the seas. And
Speaker 1: so I wanna read Lewis describing what this is' he's
Speaker 1: just picking up after tevk has has called it underwater lightning,
Speaker 1: which he thinks is an excellent analog g and Lewis
Speaker 1: writes quote. It comprises streaks, flashes, and momentarily glowing plaques
Speaker 1: of light all well beneath the surface, exactly like lightning.
Speaker 1: It flickers and darts and is in constant motion. It
Speaker 1: occurs a good deal deeper down than common luminescence, at
Speaker 1: anything from a foot or two to more than a fathom.
Speaker 1: All right, So that's already strange, because I, you know,
Speaker 1: otherwise I'd never heard of anything like that anymore. Flashes
Speaker 1: of light from deep under the water, almost like lightning.
Speaker 1: But it gets even weirder. Apparently ta lapa seems to
Speaker 1: flash from the direction of an island or a reef.
Speaker 1: You can see it well into the deep sea when
Speaker 1: you're eighty two a hundred miles away from land, But
Speaker 1: as you approach the island, the flashes of light become
Speaker 1: more and more rare, and then they disappear entirely as
Speaker 1: you get really close. The distance from land or from
Speaker 1: reefs also seems to affect how the light moves. They're
Speaker 1: slow flashes of light far out at sea, but in
Speaker 1: about ten to twenty miles from land it starts to
Speaker 1: take on a rapid, whipping back and forth movement. And uh.
Speaker 1: And it's also generally understood that tai lapa coming from
Speaker 1: reefs is slower moving than tei lapa coming from islands.
Speaker 1: So this was amazing to me because I had never
Speaker 1: heard of anything like this before. Yeah. Yeah, this is
Speaker 1: definitely new to me as well. Um and it is
Speaker 1: mysterious sound and the idea of underwater bioluminescent lightning being
Speaker 1: some sort of guide again, like all of these things,
Speaker 1: not the primary guide, but some additional tool that you
Speaker 1: could turn to. Right. Well, one thing I want to
Speaker 1: note what you said, it's the tai lapa is bioluminescent,
Speaker 1: which it may well might be, but it might be
Speaker 1: some other kind of luminescence as well. It's still there's
Speaker 1: still some question about what causes it, and we'll discuss
Speaker 1: that more in a minute. But uh, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's not a given that it's necessarily bioluminescent, like
Speaker 1: the you know, the like the general sort of ambient
Speaker 1: glow that you see in the upper area of the sea,
Speaker 1: that's no owned to be bioluminescent. But it's important that
Speaker 1: what you say that this is very much a backup
Speaker 1: method and it's not known to everyone. So Lewis documented
Speaker 1: references to it in the navigational lore from two Polynesian
Speaker 1: areas and one Micronesian area, but there were plenty of
Speaker 1: other navigators who didn't seem to know anything about Taylapa,
Speaker 1: like they had never even heard of this concept. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the people, the more recent people that we
Speaker 1: were looking at concerning this topic is a Harvard physicist
Speaker 1: by the name of John huth Um And uh, and
Speaker 1: he points out that, Yeah, in some cultures you just
Speaker 1: see no mention of it, the Marshall Islands being one
Speaker 1: that he specifically mentions where they just didn't didn't have
Speaker 1: the concept and and it's unknown exactly why is it
Speaker 1: an environmental reason? Like whatever this phenomena is, it's not
Speaker 1: it wasn't present, uh, you know around the Marshall Islands
Speaker 1: or islands that were of interest to these navigators, or
Speaker 1: is it a situation where for this particular culture they
Speaker 1: found that this was not a reliable navigational tool and
Speaker 1: it just wasn't worth keeping around, Like it's not one
Speaker 1: you can lean heavily on, and it would always be
Speaker 1: just kind of like a second or third tier backup. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it remained a mystery. Yeah, yeah, So some islanders explained
Speaker 1: that as this backup method of navigation, they could use
Speaker 1: te Lapa to steer on dark, rainy nights. So maybe
Speaker 1: you can't see the stars, you can perhaps see these
Speaker 1: flashes of underwater lightning. And Louis actually documents that he
Speaker 1: himself observed it. There was one night when it was
Speaker 1: late at night and it was dark and he was
Speaker 1: sailing with Tevak. This was on the thirty one of December,
Speaker 1: he writes, quote land Lapa was seen to be darting
Speaker 1: to and fro along two distinct bearings, which were both
Speaker 1: plain enough for me to see despite the clear night
Speaker 1: and the comparative nearness of the islands. One series kept
Speaker 1: flashing from a direction which tevk averred was that of
Speaker 1: the volcano Tina Coola. The other he said it was
Speaker 1: from the island of Nadeni. Morning revealed the high islands
Speaker 1: of Tina Coola and Nadini, each about twenty miles away
Speaker 1: and respectively west and south of our position. These were
Speaker 1: the directions that the old navigator had indicated. So in
Speaker 1: this experience, he says, yep I saw it. Tek told
Speaker 1: me it was there. I looked and I saw it,
Speaker 1: and it was in the directions of the islands, just
Speaker 1: like he said it would be. And so Louis did
Speaker 1: believe he was the first person to document this navigational
Speaker 1: sign in print. Of course, it was known before him
Speaker 1: to to the people who possessed it as part of
Speaker 1: their navigational lore. But he believed that this phenomenon had
Speaker 1: no European definition and uh. And of course, again not
Speaker 1: all navigators in the Pacific Islands were aware of Talapa,
Speaker 1: but some were from at least three distinct regions that
Speaker 1: he that he interviewed navigators from. And it was interpreted
Speaker 1: and it turned out to provide accurate information. So what
Speaker 1: was it? What's causing these flashes of light underneath the
Speaker 1: or from the direction of islands or reefs, Lewis ultimately
Speaker 1: says in the book. And then again, this was in
Speaker 1: seventy two, so we may have developed some knowledge since then.
Speaker 1: But Lewis said he really didn't know what it was,
Speaker 1: and he guessed that it may have had something to
Speaker 1: do with deep swell movement, maybe a kind of deep
Speaker 1: reflection of waves from islands or reefs. But that leaves
Speaker 1: a lot of lingering questions. Why why if it's bouncing
Speaker 1: off of these islands or reefs, why could it be
Speaker 1: seen at such great distances from land, albeit moving more slowly.
Speaker 1: And one thing that I that I found so I
Speaker 1: was reading a Harvard Gazette article about the work of
Speaker 1: that physicist you mentioned John Huth, who had done some
Speaker 1: follow up work on this, and uh. This Gazette article
Speaker 1: mentioned that many scholars disputed Lewis's reports of the Talapa quote.
Speaker 1: The lights were initially dismissed as fantasy when other researchers
Speaker 1: reported that they were unable to see them. Some critics
Speaker 1: who said thought that pursuing quote underwater lightning was akin
Speaker 1: to chasing the abominable no Man. Yeah. John Huth seems
Speaker 1: to have done a fair amount of work dealing with
Speaker 1: with Ti Lapa and one when the source that I
Speaker 1: was a reading was the article Conclusions a cross Disciplinary
Speaker 1: Journey through Spatial Orientation by who, published in the journal
Speaker 1: Structure and Dynamics in sixteen, and in this he points
Speaker 1: out that there is still no definitive explanation for the
Speaker 1: origin of Ti Lapa, But one possibility that that he
Speaker 1: seems so like, is that it's a byproduct of fish
Speaker 1: darting in a patch of sea rich with uh dino
Speaker 1: of flagelets which emit light in response to the stimuli
Speaker 1: of pressure waves. But even if that is the case,
Speaker 1: he says, then it still leaves a mystery of the
Speaker 1: directionality of the fish movements themselves. You know why and
Speaker 1: how can we navigate by this information? Right? What if
Speaker 1: that's the explanation, why would it point to islands in
Speaker 1: a reliable way? Right? And uh? One of the challenges
Speaker 1: and researching is uh, Hooth points out, is just the
Speaker 1: difficulty of rooper reproducing sightings. We need further studies which
Speaker 1: require both sensitive equipment and dependable sightings of the phenomena.
Speaker 1: Um and and again he pointed to the fact that
Speaker 1: you don't actually see it as a navigational aid in
Speaker 1: some cultures, uh, such as the Marshall Islands, raising questions
Speaker 1: of you know, is this cultural? Is it environmental? And
Speaker 1: it's simply unknown. Um uh so yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really fascinating. And again it it it. I think it
Speaker 1: serves to just reminders als that, yeah, we're dealing with
Speaker 1: a suite of different navigational techniques and and if if
Speaker 1: this is among the tools at your disposal, then you know,
Speaker 1: perhaps it is useful in in deciding like fine tuning
Speaker 1: your your your directional approach. But perhaps for some of
Speaker 1: some cultures they abandon it because it did not seem
Speaker 1: useful enough. We just don't know. I mean, I'm pretty
Speaker 1: convinced that people are actually observing this, that it's not
Speaker 1: just a fantasy. And I mean not only because it
Speaker 1: is part of the navigational lore and seems to have
Speaker 1: been used as this backup method of direction finding, but
Speaker 1: also because I mean there are additional modern reports of
Speaker 1: people saying, yeah, I actually did see it, even if
Speaker 1: I was not able to photograph it. For example, I
Speaker 1: found an article by a scholar named Marianne George who
Speaker 1: is a cultural anthropologist who uh talks about this in
Speaker 1: an article called Polynesian Navigation and Ta Lapa the Flashing
Speaker 1: published in Time and Mind, the Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness,
Speaker 1: and Culture from and she also talks about having been
Speaker 1: able to eventually witness it herself out on the ocean.
Speaker 1: But I don't think you can find video of it.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody has ever captured it like that,
Speaker 1: so it's still a very interesting question than now. One
Speaker 1: of the really interesting things concerning all of this again
Speaker 1: is the idea that in modern times, reach researchers have
Speaker 1: had to to fit a lot of this back together,
Speaker 1: you know, depending on genetics and linguistics and lural histories, etcetera,
Speaker 1: all these various disciplines and as discussed in multiple places,
Speaker 1: but specifically, you see this discussed at the Bishop Museum,
Speaker 1: both the physical museum and the online presence. You also
Speaker 1: see it discussed at at the website for Hokuleau. That's
Speaker 1: how that's um at HOCA dot com. That is h
Speaker 1: O k u l e uh pus v A. Is
Speaker 1: that you saw something rather interesting concerning deep sea voyages
Speaker 1: in Hawaiian culture, and I believe I mentioned this is
Speaker 1: one of the previous episodes, and that is that deep
Speaker 1: sea voyages in Hawaii had been extinct for several hundred years. UH.
Speaker 1: This was before contact with Europeans. The period of long
Speaker 1: voyages ended along with all contact with other Polynesian islands,
Speaker 1: and they lived in near complete isolation until seventeen seventy eight.
Speaker 1: Now there remained memories of the the age of long
Speaker 1: voyages and stories of their origins, of of the in
Speaker 1: the Hawaiian people, um and the waves of migration from Tahiti,
Speaker 1: which is two thousand five miles away, But again, the
Speaker 1: exact art of deep sea voyages had not been practiced
Speaker 1: for quite some time. Meanwhile, some Europeans formed their own
Speaker 1: ideas about how humans could have possibly made it out
Speaker 1: to such far flung islands. We mentioned this uh in
Speaker 1: passing you know, the idea that it was surely, surely
Speaker 1: by accident that these ancient sailors made their way to
Speaker 1: these various islands. Right, the idea that new islands would
Speaker 1: have always been discovered and initially colonized by people who
Speaker 1: got lost or you know, blown away in storms. Random
Speaker 1: drifts basically, and again modern scholarships has turned away from
Speaker 1: that idea that, of course there would probably be some
Speaker 1: cases of islands being discovered by accident, but also a
Speaker 1: lot of cases of deliberate exploratory ventures. Now there are
Speaker 1: also some outliers, such as thor hair Dolls hypothesis that
Speaker 1: South American sailors made the voyage. Uh He famously tried
Speaker 1: and failed to prove this, But yeah, the predominant theory
Speaker 1: for a long time with that polina Jian sailors just
Speaker 1: simply didn't have the skill to make the journey and
Speaker 1: they either rode the wind currents and or were blown
Speaker 1: off course and arrived at the Hawaiian Islands by accident.
Speaker 1: But then in nineteen seventy three, the Polynesian Voyaging Society
Speaker 1: formed to challenge this theory. Uh Dr Ben of Finny
Speaker 1: Herb Collinui Kane and Tommy Holmes aimed to put together
Speaker 1: a team to build a traditional deep sea voyaging Hawaiian
Speaker 1: canoe and sail it from the Hawaiian Islands to Tahiti. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the challenging parts in all this was simply
Speaker 1: finding a traditional sailing master. Again, especially when you're dealing
Speaker 1: with Hawaiian culture. This is this is something of a
Speaker 1: forgotten science at the uh SO it had not been
Speaker 1: practiced in a while. So they ended up going with
Speaker 1: a particular individual by the name of of moult Pie
Speaker 1: long Um who lived ninety two through two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: a man from the Micronesian island of Sodawall. He'd been
Speaker 1: trained from an early age and the traditional techniques of
Speaker 1: of navigation environmental navigation, and he proved an essential part
Speaker 1: of this whole experiment and is still remembered as a
Speaker 1: major figure both in the academic exploration of of Hawaiian history,
Speaker 1: Polynesian history, uh and and Oceanic culture, but also just
Speaker 1: a sort of something of a cultural hero as well.
Speaker 1: So the story of of Hokalia is really fascinating and
Speaker 1: they've been whole documentaries about it. They have a wonderful website.
Speaker 1: But essentially they build a sixty two ft long, nineteen
Speaker 1: foot wide, double hulled canoe or waakkula, and they called
Speaker 1: it um. They called the vessel um hoku Lea, named
Speaker 1: for an important navigational star. It's the star of Gladness,
Speaker 1: also known as our tourists and the brightest Star in
Speaker 1: the Boaties constellation. While the ship's construction also made use
Speaker 1: of plywood, fiberglass and resin uh and it was accompanied
Speaker 1: by a modern vessel, um Hokala itself was completely unpowered,
Speaker 1: and even more importantly, navigation was attempted without the use
Speaker 1: of any technology or devices, at least down the way
Speaker 1: to Tahiti. Um for the return trip, they did use
Speaker 1: some instruments, uh, but they just yeah, they depended on
Speaker 1: the traditional navigation practices that maultpie Loon brought with him.
Speaker 1: And so on May one six they set out from
Speaker 1: Honolula Bay on Maui and traveled thirty three days uh
Speaker 1: to Papa Atta Harbor in Tahiti. And they also brought
Speaker 1: along with them livestock to study how these could be
Speaker 1: cared for at sea, because as we mentioned, you know,
Speaker 1: canoe species were a key part of the equation. It's
Speaker 1: not just could you could you voyage to this island
Speaker 1: or these islands, but could you bring the species with
Speaker 1: you that you needed to survive? Yeah, And and it
Speaker 1: was a success. Again, they did use instruments on the
Speaker 1: return trip, but at that point they had already proved
Speaker 1: what was possible and multiple voyages have been completed since
Speaker 1: then to further prove all of this out. Now, an
Speaker 1: interesting wrinkle in all of this um is that during
Speaker 1: the nine nineties, the Bishop Museums Native Hawaiian Arts and
Speaker 1: Culture Program, they set out to create an authentic verse
Speaker 1: of this sort of vessel using only traditional and native material,
Speaker 1: so again, you know, not the fiberglass and so forth.
Speaker 1: But they said, let's build one like would have been
Speaker 1: built historically. And they found that the native CoA trees
Speaker 1: of the islands were too small due to human activities,
Speaker 1: so they ultimately that they had to they had to
Speaker 1: go beyond the islands in order to get the wood
Speaker 1: to build the canoe. They were ultimately gifted four hundred
Speaker 1: year old spruce logs from a tribe in southeast Alaska
Speaker 1: and use those to construct the vessel. Yeah. So anyway,
Speaker 1: I I highly recommend looking into the Hoka Project, their website,
Speaker 1: various documentaries about what they did and and and continue
Speaker 1: to do. It is my understanding that the vessel is
Speaker 1: still functional, still operational, and they still uh, they still
Speaker 1: take it out. This whole series has been one of
Speaker 1: those uh episodes on the show where I'm just amazed
Speaker 1: because I uh this is something I knew absolutely nothing
Speaker 1: about to start with. I would not have known the
Speaker 1: very first thing about like how you navigate on the
Speaker 1: open sea without instruments. I mean to be honest, I
Speaker 1: don't know how you do it with instruments either, but
Speaker 1: but uh, but yeah, this is this has been so
Speaker 1: eye opening, Uh, just thinking about like how much information
Speaker 1: you can get from the environment if you know, if
Speaker 1: you've when you build on the knowledge accumulated over generations,
Speaker 1: and you have the discipline and the attention to pay
Speaker 1: attention to your surroundings with this level of care. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as certainly as as a landsman, as Hermon and Melville
Speaker 1: would put it, I am amazed by all this. But
Speaker 1: but I think it's also worth with pointing out that,
Speaker 1: you know, we've touched on experienced sailors who have been
Speaker 1: very into this topic as well have been amazed by
Speaker 1: it as well. So uh, yeah, there's there's a lot
Speaker 1: to marvel at here. All right, Well, there you have it.
Speaker 1: We hope you have enjoyed this journey, if we've enjoyed
Speaker 1: a researching and discussing it, If you would like to
Speaker 1: listen to other episodes of stuff to blow your mind,
Speaker 1: you can find them in the Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed, which will good wherever you get your podcast.
Speaker 1: Core episodes air on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We run a
Speaker 1: short form artifact on Wednesday's listener mail on Monday's. On
Speaker 1: Friday's we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to
Speaker 1: set aside the science and the culture for the most
Speaker 1: part and talk about a weird picture. And then we
Speaker 1: have on the weekends a rerun. But yeah, just to
Speaker 1: find us wherever you get your podcast. You can also
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Speaker 1: power to do so, just rate, review and subscribe. Huge
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us
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Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
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