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: for a couple of episodes, maybe more. We're not sure
Speaker 1: how these things ultimately fall together, but we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about how humans discovered and ultimately colonized the Polynesian Islands,
Speaker 1: places we know today as uh the Islands of Hawaii,
Speaker 1: Easter Island, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Fiji,
Speaker 1: uh Tuvalu, and more so in our in our information
Speaker 1: and intercontinental travel age. Though I feel like these names
Speaker 1: may seem very familiar and known, even though they might
Speaker 1: be places that we also paradoxically know are very far
Speaker 1: away from us. We may know that they are, in
Speaker 1: many cases, you know, vastly separated from other islands. But
Speaker 1: just because we can pull up pictures of them, just
Speaker 1: because we know we could book a flight to one
Speaker 1: of these if we so desired, Uh, they may seem closer,
Speaker 1: they may see the world may seem smaller than it
Speaker 1: actually is. You know, there's a very limited way of
Speaker 1: imagining what planet Earth is where you know, you say, okay,
Speaker 1: somebody picture the Earth, and and what do people picture.
Speaker 1: I think they probably picture looking down at some continental
Speaker 1: part of the Earth, maybe seeing mountain ranges, maybe seeing
Speaker 1: the Sahara Desert or something. But often people picture land, right,
Speaker 1: they picture the continents. But if you look at Earth
Speaker 1: from space, what it's really characterized by his ocean. Ocean
Speaker 1: covers most of the Earth's surface, and there's one ocean
Speaker 1: in particular that really takes the cake. It's the Pacific Ocean. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but I definitely wanted to drive home just how
Speaker 1: large the territory is we're talking about here, and we're
Speaker 1: when we're talking about the colonization of this region, we're
Speaker 1: not talking about European colonization. We're talking about the original
Speaker 1: human sailors who departed from Asia and gradually settled the
Speaker 1: remainder of the world, uh, setting off into the unknown.
Speaker 1: But then also depending on navigation, some really fascinating navigation
Speaker 1: techniques that we'll get into in order to uh to
Speaker 1: chart this region. So yeah, when you look at at
Speaker 1: a map of the globe, it depends on how you're
Speaker 1: looking at it. Right, If you're you're taking a very
Speaker 1: um uh, north America centric version and a very North
Speaker 1: America centric globe. You're like, all right, there's the Earth.
Speaker 1: It's mostly US, it's mostly North America. But you turn
Speaker 1: it around, you uh, you turn it to the Pacific side,
Speaker 1: and you're looking at a water world, a true water world.
Speaker 1: You're you're looking at a side of the globe that
Speaker 1: is almost all Pacific Ocean. Because the Pacific Ocean is
Speaker 1: just simply enormous. It's the largest and the deepest averse oceans.
Speaker 1: We're talking sixty three million, eight hundred thousand square miles.
Speaker 1: That's approximately a hundred and sixty five million, two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty thousand square kilometers, and it takes up one
Speaker 1: third of Earth's surface or thirty percent of it, depending
Speaker 1: on who's doing the calculation. It contains the deepest parts
Speaker 1: of the ocean, and it contains more than half of
Speaker 1: the world's open water supply. Specifically, within the realm of
Speaker 1: of Polynesia and Micronesia, these these subdivisions of parts of Oceania,
Speaker 1: which is the you know, the region of the Pacific
Speaker 1: containing the Pacific Islands where people live. Um there in
Speaker 1: this part of the world. There's an author named David Lewis,
Speaker 1: whose book I'm going to refer to throughout these episodes.
Speaker 1: But there's a part of his book where he says
Speaker 1: that if you exclude New Zealand within Polynesia and Micronesia,
Speaker 1: there are two parts land to every one thousand parts water.
Speaker 1: Uh So this is this is an area characterized almost
Speaker 1: entirely by water, but Polka dotted with these little hubs
Speaker 1: of land throughout. Yeah, various far flung islands that people
Speaker 1: were able to to eventually colonize and and and make
Speaker 1: their home. And it's yeah, it's it's fascinating. How again,
Speaker 1: I've I've been to I've been fortunate enough to travel
Speaker 1: to you know, say that some of the Hawaiian islands
Speaker 1: and you get there and you know they're they're amazing.
Speaker 1: But but like, I don't have the experience of of
Speaker 1: just the open Pacific, of of the of the many places,
Speaker 1: the majority of the places in the Pacific Ocean where
Speaker 1: there is no side of land, where there is only
Speaker 1: the open water. Now, you don't have to be deep
Speaker 1: into historical theories of human migration to grasp the question
Speaker 1: of like looking at all these islands in the Pacific,
Speaker 1: seeing how far away they are from each other. How
Speaker 1: how small a percent of the area of the Pacific
Speaker 1: Ocean the islands represent, and notice how many of them
Speaker 1: are populated by people, And wonder how on earth did
Speaker 1: that happen? How did people find and settle on all
Speaker 1: of these tiny islands in this vast ocean. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating question one that one that we're
Speaker 1: still exploring to this day. We're still figuring out. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna be getting in a little bit more into
Speaker 1: the history of it and certainly into the navigational techniques
Speaker 1: the amazing ways that these these ancient sailors made their
Speaker 1: way across the open ocean. But first of all, let's
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and drive home that while while human
Speaker 1: colonization of the Pacific Islands is one of the most
Speaker 1: recent human migration movements in our history, it still retains
Speaker 1: you know, more than a few mysteries, uh, and using
Speaker 1: everything from traditional histories and linguistic analysis to climate models
Speaker 1: and genetics, researchers are still continuing to try and figure
Speaker 1: out exactly how this migration occurred, when it occurred, where, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, where where we went where humans migrated to
Speaker 1: first in this and so we're going to be dealing
Speaker 1: with some tentative dates here as we we roll through,
Speaker 1: like the basic story of human migration across the Pacific. So,
Speaker 1: according to Linda Noreene Schaefer, in Maritime Southeast Asia to
Speaker 1: five hundred, this was a book that came out in
Speaker 1: the ancestors of Malo, Polynesians left the mainland to settle Um,
Speaker 1: the island of Taiwan around four thousand BC, and from
Speaker 1: there they moved into what is now the Philippines and Indonesia,
Speaker 1: and then during the third millennium BC, they moved on
Speaker 1: to settle the islands uh And and Penninsula peninsulas of
Speaker 1: what Schaffer refers to as Southeast Asia's maritime realm, and
Speaker 1: the people who remained there came to be known as
Speaker 1: the Malays. So from here we see movement of the
Speaker 1: same people's further out into the ocean uh the very
Speaker 1: movement of human migration that would eventually become the Polynesians.
Speaker 1: By fifteen hundred BC, they had reached as far as
Speaker 1: the Bismarck Archipelago north the east of New Guinea and
Speaker 1: Um and Schaefer rights that within a few centuries they
Speaker 1: had spread to West Polynesia, that's Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and
Speaker 1: Polynesian sailors, explorers and colonists continued and eventually they were
Speaker 1: eventually reached and colonized the far more remote eastward islands
Speaker 1: of Hawaii, um what is now New Zealand and what
Speaker 1: we have also come to refer to as Easter Island
Speaker 1: or Rapa Nui. All right, so now let's try and
Speaker 1: put some dates on all of this. But of course
Speaker 1: all of this is UH is playing out over a
Speaker 1: long period of time, and it's still an area of
Speaker 1: ongoing study and discussions, so these dates are tendative. In
Speaker 1: Schaefer's work, some of the estimated dates she sites include
Speaker 1: Rapa Nui around five hundred CE, although estimates seem I've
Speaker 1: seen estimates that suggest as early as three hundred C
Speaker 1: and then UH. In nineteen nine, the University of Hawaii's
Speaker 1: Dennis um Kawajarada suggested the following dates. He says, Okay,
Speaker 1: hundreds and gathers inhabited Australia and New Guinea by fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years ago, and then around between sixteen hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve hundred b c E. A cultural complex called Lapita
Speaker 1: had spread from New Guinea in Melanesia to as far
Speaker 1: east as e g. Samoa and Tonga, and then Polynesian
Speaker 1: culture developed at the eastern edge of this region. And
Speaker 1: then he says that around three hundred b C or earlier,
Speaker 1: seafares from Samoa and Tonga discovered and settled islands to
Speaker 1: the east what are known now it's the Cook Islands,
Speaker 1: uh Tahiti, Nui, uh To, Omotos and Hiva. And then
Speaker 1: around three hundred sea or earlier, voyagers from central or
Speaker 1: eastern Polynesia discovered in settled eastern island. And then around
Speaker 1: four hundred sea or earlier, voyagers from the Cook Islands Tahiti,
Speaker 1: Nua and or Hiva settled Hawaii. And then around one
Speaker 1: thousand CEE or earlier, he wrote that the voyagers from
Speaker 1: the Society Islands and or the Cook Islands settled what
Speaker 1: is now in New Zealand. Now again these are just
Speaker 1: tentative dates. Um there. You know, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of other work. For instance, according to the University of
Speaker 1: Hawaii at Manoa anthropologist Terry Hunt, and this is via
Speaker 1: Hokalua dot com, which will refer back to that website
Speaker 1: some more in the future. Uh they were part of
Speaker 1: a radio carbon study looking at artifacts from the island,
Speaker 1: and they adjusted some of the suggested timelines based on
Speaker 1: that work, ultimately arguing for a more rapid and recent
Speaker 1: colonization of the outer islands. Specifically, he proposed Samoa around
Speaker 1: eight hundred b c e the Central Society Islands between
Speaker 1: ten and eleven twenty, and dispersal into New Zealand, Hawaii
Speaker 1: and Rapa Nui and other locations between eleven ninety and
Speaker 1: twelve nineties c e. UM and I've seen twelve CE
Speaker 1: is sometimes cited as the most recent possibility for Rappa
Speaker 1: Newly colonization. And so yeah, I know we're hitting every
Speaker 1: one of a lot of dates here. I highly suggest
Speaker 1: going out on your own and finding some of these
Speaker 1: sources and pouring over them in more detail if you
Speaker 1: want to get get a clear picture of how this
Speaker 1: is going. There are also some wonderful visual aids depicting uh,
Speaker 1: you know, exactly how uh these waves of migration might
Speaker 1: have looked uh, And I'm always fascinated by those uh
Speaker 1: even though they you know, they often change again, they're
Speaker 1: subject to the same uh level of change that we
Speaker 1: see with some of the pop sable dates for arrivals
Speaker 1: and colonizations, etcetera. And again it's a very exciting area
Speaker 1: of study, and you'll you'll see papers arguing for the
Speaker 1: for for other things as well, the likes of South
Speaker 1: American and even Antarctic contact by various Polynesian people um
Speaker 1: and uh and I it's my understanding I didn't go
Speaker 1: deep into some of those. I think some of those
Speaker 1: are are kind of controversial or some of them and
Speaker 1: certainly some of the evidence is maybe not as as solid,
Speaker 1: But it just to give you an idea of where
Speaker 1: some of the research is going today and what people
Speaker 1: are looking at. But regardless of the exact dates, you know,
Speaker 1: we can't discount the wonder and accomplishment of the whole scenario.
Speaker 1: You know that this this was this last age of
Speaker 1: true human um exodus, true human discovery and colonization, visiting
Speaker 1: places that humans had never been before, creating a foothold
Speaker 1: of human civilization in places that had belonged only um
Speaker 1: you know, to various animals before and in the case
Speaker 1: of the Logan Islands, places where the no mammals had
Speaker 1: ever arrived there, that had not flown or swam through
Speaker 1: the seas you know that you had to have been
Speaker 1: a bat or a seal. I want to read a
Speaker 1: quote from from the University of Hawaii's Dennis Colorada here
Speaker 1: for which he he really sums a lot of this
Speaker 1: up um and again this is from there. That hoku
Speaker 1: lea website at hokala dot com. That's h o k
Speaker 1: u l e a dot com. Uh, he writes. Quote.
Speaker 1: The Polynesian migration to Hawaii was part of one of
Speaker 1: the most remarkable achievements of humanity, the discovery and settlement
Speaker 1: of the remote, widely scattered islands of the Central Pacific.
Speaker 1: The migration began before the birth of Christ. While Europeans
Speaker 1: were sailing close to the coastlines of continents before developing
Speaker 1: navigational instruments that would allow them to venture out into
Speaker 1: the open ocean. Voyagers from Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa began
Speaker 1: to settle islands in an ocean area of over ten
Speaker 1: million square miles. The settlement took a thousand years to
Speaker 1: complete and involved finding and fixing in mind the position
Speaker 1: of islands, sometimes less than a mile in diameter, on
Speaker 1: on which the highest landmark was a coconut tree. By
Speaker 1: the time European explorers into the Pacific Ocean in the
Speaker 1: sixteenth century. Almost all the habitable islands had been settled
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years. It's truly remarkable. Yeah, especially when you,
Speaker 1: I mean you get beyond the exact timelines and you
Speaker 1: start looking at how they traveled and how they navigated, UM,
Speaker 1: and what these islands were like when they found them. Uh,
Speaker 1: we're gonna be you know, we're gonna get into the
Speaker 1: moment more into the navigation models UM, either later in
Speaker 1: this episode or in the next. But as Cabajorada points out,
Speaker 1: what we're talking about voyages conducted entirely in canoes made
Speaker 1: from wood and coconut fiber, constructed with tools made from bone,
Speaker 1: rock and coral. They use sails woven from coconut or
Speaker 1: or pandana sleeves, and when no win was available, they paddled.
Speaker 1: And these were dangerous voyages as well, not only at
Speaker 1: open sea, but when you arrived on some of these places,
Speaker 1: it's easy to imagine the sort of stereotypical like Paradise Island. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know vision where Okay, you've reached the island. The
Speaker 1: dangerous part is done. Now you're in this place. It's
Speaker 1: lush and full of life. But that's not like when
Speaker 1: you get there, Yeah, like there's gonna be you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of animals ready for the picking, and you
Speaker 1: know there there. If you get into specifics, there are
Speaker 1: some cases where there's some sort of of of of
Speaker 1: of of natural, naturally occurring animal on that island or
Speaker 1: the waters around it that are perhaps easier pickings. But
Speaker 1: in other cases you're dealing with environments where again like
Speaker 1: they're they're just no mammals, there are no large meaty birds.
Speaker 1: Uh you know, they're they're desolate there playing In some
Speaker 1: cases there it was very difficult for humans to you know,
Speaker 1: find the resources they needed to survive unless they, of
Speaker 1: course brought them with them on voyages, which adds this
Speaker 1: other wrinkle to these to these voyages that you would
Speaker 1: have to bring things like pigs, chickens, etcetera. At the
Speaker 1: same time, I want to drive home that there's no
Speaker 1: one island environment here. There's a wide ver arriety in
Speaker 1: the sorts of islands and island environments you encounter across
Speaker 1: this vast region. Uh So the story is going to
Speaker 1: be a little different each time. So again, in many
Speaker 1: cases they had to bring important plant or animal species
Speaker 1: with them, which of course is the same story you
Speaker 1: see in land based migration, except with the challenges of
Speaker 1: an open boat. And so you'd end up with this
Speaker 1: first wave of invasive species on the island. And these
Speaker 1: are often called canoe plants and canoe animals because again
Speaker 1: that's how they reach their destinations. And ultimately we're talking dogs, pigs, chickens,
Speaker 1: but also plants such as sugar cane, banana, coconut, taro,
Speaker 1: and bab boo. So some of these plants that are
Speaker 1: so you know, linked in the mind and linked culturally
Speaker 1: to these islands that you have to remind yourself that
Speaker 1: they were not always there. They were brought with them
Speaker 1: with the people who settled these islands. Yeah, though personally
Speaker 1: right now my mind is fixated on the idea of
Speaker 1: having to make long sea voyages with like a canoe
Speaker 1: full of chickens. Yeah, but it it was done. And uh,
Speaker 1: and as we'll get into much later, you know, in
Speaker 1: order or to prove that these voyages were possible, they
Speaker 1: had to do things like bringing animals with them on
Speaker 1: the test voyages. So, uh, it's it's fascinating now on
Speaker 1: this topic of of the the environments on these different
Speaker 1: islands and how they weren't fully stocked life nourishing buffets.
Speaker 1: I thought that that David Lewis made an excellent point
Speaker 1: in that book that you you mentioned briefly earlier. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: So to name this book, I'm gonna be referring to
Speaker 1: it throughout these episodes. It's one I've been reading that
Speaker 1: is a seminal work in the history of studies of
Speaker 1: Pacific island navigation. And this was originally published by the
Speaker 1: University of Hawaii Press in nineteen seventy two. It was
Speaker 1: by a medical doctor, sailor and scholar named David Lewis,
Speaker 1: and it's called We the Navigators The Ancient Art of
Speaker 1: Land Finding in the Pacific. I was published in seventy two,
Speaker 1: but I think updated with some subsequent editions at least
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four, and it may have gone through
Speaker 1: other editions since then. But this is a really interesting
Speaker 1: book because its studies traditional Pacific navigation and land finding techniques,
Speaker 1: not just by the the indirect evidence of trying to
Speaker 1: like look at the history, but actually by putting them
Speaker 1: to direct experiments, so navigating with experienced master navigators from
Speaker 1: various specific islands and studying their techniques firsthand. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and the point that that Lewis makes about the
Speaker 1: stark environments was really neat because it meant that the
Speaker 1: dangerous voyage to get to these islands and establish yourself
Speaker 1: on these islands. You it didn't mean that you could stop.
Speaker 1: In many cases, you would have to keep making voyages
Speaker 1: because there were certain resources that you could not get
Speaker 1: at the new island. But we're worth the dangerous journey
Speaker 1: to acquire. Uh. The example that that Lewis brings up
Speaker 1: is the lack of hard stone on the Cook Island
Speaker 1: of Puka Puka, requiring journeys to take place, uh two
Speaker 1: islands where hard stone could be acquired for use in
Speaker 1: vital tool construction. And he writes that these would have
Speaker 1: been complex trading cycles that would have also been influenced
Speaker 1: by you know, other human factors like the since you know,
Speaker 1: the desire for adventure, the um or, and also the
Speaker 1: necessity of exile, which I found interesting, like ultimately the
Speaker 1: idea of having a complex culture and cultural dynamics on
Speaker 1: a single island. What what where do you send people?
Speaker 1: Where do people run to? Uh? If if there if
Speaker 1: there's some sort of political turmoil on the island, so
Speaker 1: contact sometimes remains in place because of that as well. Now,
Speaker 1: before we get into the specifics of of of navigation
Speaker 1: in among Pacific islanders and the colonizing of Polynesia, I
Speaker 1: thought we might briefly touch on some of the basics
Speaker 1: of sailing and navigation is larger trends in human technology. Um,
Speaker 1: we could easily do a proper even multi episode invention
Speaker 1: episode about ships. But here are some of the key
Speaker 1: dates provided in the seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient
Speaker 1: World by Brian Fagan at all um a book I
Speaker 1: refer to that refer to lot uh because it's really
Speaker 1: good and again highly recommend people pick up a copy
Speaker 1: of it. Um but A Fagan and the various co
Speaker 1: authors that he worked on with the various sailing and
Speaker 1: ship based chapters, points out that seagoing watercraft just in
Speaker 1: general dates back probably before forty thousand b c E.
Speaker 1: In Southeast Asia and Indonesia. We see long boats from
Speaker 1: Neanderthal cultures from seventy two hundred b c E. And
Speaker 1: we see long grafts from seventh century BC and Mesopotamia. Again,
Speaker 1: these are just general dates based on some of the
Speaker 1: earliest evidence we have, and then as far as things
Speaker 1: like plank boats and that goes back to like three
Speaker 1: thousand BC in egypt Um. And then finally we get
Speaker 1: up to the frame first boats in the second and
Speaker 1: third century c E and in my in what is
Speaker 1: now all England. And as far as sailing, we have
Speaker 1: depictions of sales from thirty one b C. In Egypt.
Speaker 1: We see two masted ships from sixth century in b C.
Speaker 1: B C in Egypt, and the oldest surviving sale comes
Speaker 1: from the second century b C in Egypt. But again
Speaker 1: these are just some of the oldest, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: direct evidence that we have or depictions, descriptions, etcetera. As
Speaker 1: Fagan points out in the section on navigation with Sean mcgrail,
Speaker 1: author of Boats of the World and professor of maritime archaeology,
Speaker 1: the earliest voyages for our ancestors would have remained within
Speaker 1: side of land. Landmarks and sea marks would have been
Speaker 1: key to navigation, and we see this reflected in recorded
Speaker 1: traditions and classical and medieval sailing manuals. Makes sense, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's like if if any of us were
Speaker 1: to set out on a boat into the water, I
Speaker 1: would want to keep land in sight. I need to
Speaker 1: know where that land is. So all of this early uh.
Speaker 1: You know, oceanic activity would have taken place withinside of land,
Speaker 1: and we depended upon things you can notice on land. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know your frame of reference reference was based on
Speaker 1: the place you came from. Sure, But what happens when
Speaker 1: you leave side of land. Well, by the mid UH
Speaker 1: set at millennium BC, sailors in the South Pacific were
Speaker 1: of course doing this by means of what we call
Speaker 1: environmental navigation. We'll be getting into this at length. Uh,
Speaker 1: but you know, at this point you have to travel
Speaker 1: beyond dependence on coastal landmarks and sea marks. But that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that there's not an order and a language
Speaker 1: to the open ocean. And for those who had the
Speaker 1: wisdom and the observational skills of the accumulated knowledge of
Speaker 1: their ancestors, they could plot their way by these cues,
Speaker 1: They could recognize them, they could read the map of
Speaker 1: the ocean. Now we'll get into the details of this
Speaker 1: in a bit, but as Fagan and mcgrail point out,
Speaker 1: you'll find indirect references to environmental navigation methodologies in Homer's
Speaker 1: the Odyssey, as well as in the medieval text of
Speaker 1: the Life of St. Brendan, and environmental navigation would have
Speaker 1: been used in some form worldwide by the first millennium CE,
Speaker 1: and that's when instruments began to pop up. That's when
Speaker 1: we begin to use these various technological things to help us, uh,
Speaker 1: make our way across the open water. But with the
Speaker 1: navigators of the Pacific Islands, we're talking again about peak
Speaker 1: environmental navigation, a level of advancement that exceeded anything else
Speaker 1: in the rest of the world, anything else that the
Speaker 1: rest of the world was capable of or had been
Speaker 1: capable of, um aweing some of the first Europeans to
Speaker 1: encounter such techniques and for a while seeming simply impossible
Speaker 1: to some Western minds. Uh, you know that for a
Speaker 1: while it just seemed impossible that, oh, the people who
Speaker 1: were you know, that live in these islands, they must
Speaker 1: be here by accident, they must be here by mistake,
Speaker 1: and they're merely survivors of the ocean. They're not masters
Speaker 1: of its navigation. But as we'll get to they were.
Speaker 1: They were the masters. That's exactly right. And that's actually
Speaker 1: one of the main points that David Lewis makes in
Speaker 1: this book We the Navigators. Um, he was responding in
Speaker 1: some ways to kind of trends in scholarship on the
Speaker 1: on the settlement of the Pacific islands that had tended
Speaker 1: to say that, well, a large number of these islands
Speaker 1: must have just been edtled and discovered by accident, right
Speaker 1: that maybe a fisherman or traders were out at sea
Speaker 1: and they became lost, they drifted off course, and just
Speaker 1: by happenstance they drifted to new islands that hadn't been
Speaker 1: settled before, and then having discovered them, those islands could
Speaker 1: be settled. Of course, it is possible that some islands
Speaker 1: were discovered this way, but Lewis pushes back, arguing that
Speaker 1: there's actually a pretty good evidence for a a program
Speaker 1: of deliberate exploration and very accurate navigation by the sailors
Speaker 1: of the time to to locate islands and and settle them.
Speaker 1: So maybe actually it's time to introduce this book more
Speaker 1: fully that I've been reading because I wanted to mention
Speaker 1: a number of things that he talks about in it.
Speaker 1: So again, the book is called We the Navigators, The
Speaker 1: Ancient Art of Land Finding in the Pacific. It was
Speaker 1: first published in nineteen seventy two, and the author, David Lewis,
Speaker 1: was as I said, he was a medical doctor. He
Speaker 1: was an experienced amateur sailor, so he had participated in
Speaker 1: like you know, yacht races and things like that, and
Speaker 1: a scholar. He was born in England, but he was
Speaker 1: raised in New Zealand and Rairotonga in the Cook Islands
Speaker 1: in the South Pacific, and Lewis had been a sailing
Speaker 1: and kayaking enthusiasts for much of his life. He had
Speaker 1: done some competitive sailing, including a Transatlantic single handed yacht
Speaker 1: race in nineteen sixty and at least one circumnavigation of
Speaker 1: the globe in a catamaran, and inspired by his experiences
Speaker 1: with long sea voyages in small boats and his love
Speaker 1: of Polynesian culture since his childhood, in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: he got a grant from Australian National University to study
Speaker 1: traditional Polynesian navigation techniques that did not rely on charts
Speaker 1: or scientific instruments, and he did this research by learning
Speaker 1: directly from several older Polynesian sailors and master navigators, experimenting
Speaker 1: firsthand with voyages across the Pacific. With these navigators at
Speaker 1: the helm or experimenting with what they taught him. And
Speaker 1: so there are three basic versus of non documentary information
Speaker 1: that he talks about. So one is shore based instruction
Speaker 1: on ancient navigation techniques from knowledgeable navigators in the Carolinians,
Speaker 1: the Santa Cruz Reef Islanders and two groups of Tea
Speaker 1: Copeans uh Niningo Islanders, Gilbert E's and Tongans. And then
Speaker 1: he also gets instruction during navigation itself on his yacht
Speaker 1: known as the is Bjorn, which is under the command
Speaker 1: of two older master navigators who helped him with his research.
Speaker 1: One is a man named Tevak of the Santa Cruz
Speaker 1: Reef Islands and another is named Hippo Or of pula
Speaker 1: Wat in the Carolines. And I like the approach here
Speaker 1: because actually, uh he opens his book by talking about
Speaker 1: the fact that understanding indigenous navigation of the Pacific has
Speaker 1: been really held back by what he calls an overly
Speaker 1: theoretical approach. You know, just people trying to uh look
Speaker 1: at indirect evidence to understand how the navigation happened, rather
Speaker 1: than doing firsthand voyages with the navigators themselves. Yeah, actually
Speaker 1: diving into the the accumulated knowledge of these cultures on
Speaker 1: navigation in some cases. So there's a lot of interesting
Speaker 1: stuff about this book. One of the interesting things he
Speaker 1: mentions early on is he says, when he was growing
Speaker 1: up in Polynesia, he says to his elder Polynesian cousins, Uh,
Speaker 1: the ocean quote was a homely and not unfriendly place.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because it I mean, obviously, as a
Speaker 1: land lubber like me thinks the idea of voyaging out
Speaker 1: on the ocean in a canoe is like, inherently just
Speaker 1: sounds terrifying, right, But to some extent that is cultural.
Speaker 1: That's like, because I'm not used to the idea and
Speaker 1: to people that have a culture of of long ocean
Speaker 1: voyages in small watercraft like these canoes and catamarans. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's not necessarily such a scary thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: of course ocean voyages do always involve dangers, but under
Speaker 1: the guidance of these long tested, ancient navigational techniques, if
Speaker 1: you know what you're doing and you know where you're going,
Speaker 1: it is actually not necessarily a scary thing to do.
Speaker 1: In fact, it could be a sort of joyful part
Speaker 1: of your culture. But on the other hand, thinking about
Speaker 1: the ocean as a homely and not unfriendly place, this
Speaker 1: might cause you to assume that spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time at sea would would make ancient Pacific Islanders have
Speaker 1: a kind of intuitive feel for ocean navigation that couldn't
Speaker 1: be put into words the same way that you have
Speaker 1: for a lot of skills you have. You know, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things that if you do them
Speaker 1: enough and you get good at them, you know what
Speaker 1: to do and you can do it well. But you
Speaker 1: couldn't necessarily explain to somebody else why you're doing what
Speaker 1: you're doing. But Lewis strongly resists this type of characterization
Speaker 1: about Pacific Island navigation. He says it's, in fact the
Speaker 1: exact opposite. He writes, quote one further notable feature of
Speaker 1: what we were told and had shown to us was
Speaker 1: that never once did anyone lay claim to any form
Speaker 1: of quote sixth sense. A navigator had reason to believe
Speaker 1: that land lay over the horizon because he had observed
Speaker 1: certain signs that told him so, not on account of
Speaker 1: some vague intuition. And I think this is a really
Speaker 1: important point to hammer home about how ancient Pacific Island
Speaker 1: navigation worked. It wasn't that you've got a feel for
Speaker 1: it and then you just instinctively knew what to do.
Speaker 1: It was based on knowledge and well calibrated external signs,
Speaker 1: and so I think that means it It probably makes
Speaker 1: more sense to think of ancient Pacific navigation as more
Speaker 1: of a science than an art. You're not just getting
Speaker 1: a feel for things and relying on your intuition, but
Speaker 1: referencing specific markers and indicators of your position. Though these
Speaker 1: markers might be mostly invisible to people who didn't know
Speaker 1: exactly what to look for. Yeah, I mean it makes sense,
Speaker 1: right the science. You would need the science to get there,
Speaker 1: because the the the ocean is ultimately unforgiving. You know,
Speaker 1: if you were just going on a gut instinct, you
Speaker 1: might you might be right some of the time, but
Speaker 1: if you get it really wrong once, then you might
Speaker 1: not be coming back to shore exactly. And that really
Speaker 1: comes through in studying these techniques. It is based on
Speaker 1: specific markers, specific pieces of knowledge, specific cues in the environment,
Speaker 1: and a major point of of Lewis's book is how
Speaker 1: accurate these specific techniques and external markers were in the
Speaker 1: hands of a master Pacific navigator. Who knew what they
Speaker 1: were doing UM. He writes that navigators of Polynesia and
Speaker 1: Micronesia seem to employ basically all of the same techniques
Speaker 1: with only slight variations. He says the only major differences
Speaker 1: were the features of local geography, because a lot of
Speaker 1: these um methods of navigation do rely on knowing where
Speaker 1: specific islands in the area you're navigating are, so that
Speaker 1: would be different depending on what island groups you're sailing between.
Speaker 1: But otherwise the techniques are extremely similar, and he says
Speaker 1: that throughout Polynesia and Micronesia. He said that the techniques
Speaker 1: were employed basically with the same level of effectiveness, measured
Speaker 1: by the accuracy at landfall, which in general was highly accurate,
Speaker 1: especially astonishingly accurate for not using tools and equipment that
Speaker 1: are available to twentieth century navigators. Than now, I wanted
Speaker 1: to come back to a fact I already mentioned once earlier,
Speaker 1: but it's this astonishing figure that that Lewis gives talking
Speaker 1: about the world of the Polynesians and the Micronesians, saying
Speaker 1: that they inhabit a world of ocean. Again, if you
Speaker 1: exclude New Zealand, this area of the globe has two
Speaker 1: parts land to every one thousand parts water. And then
Speaker 1: he mentioned something about this that I thought was really interesting.
Speaker 1: He writes, quote, ocean spaces can inhibit contact, though terrestrial
Speaker 1: features like mountain ranges may do so equally, but they
Speaker 1: become highways rather than barriers as marine technology, especially navigation,
Speaker 1: becomes effective. I had never thought about that before, but
Speaker 1: I think that that's exactly right. So you can have
Speaker 1: various barriers to travel and communication between different regions and cultures.
Speaker 1: But whereas a mountain on land is always a barrier,
Speaker 1: you know, even if you build a road through it,
Speaker 1: the mountain will still slow you down. You know, making
Speaker 1: a road through it just makes it sort of less
Speaker 1: of a barrier. The ocean is something that can transition
Speaker 1: from a brick wall to a super highway. Once you
Speaker 1: have the skill and the knowledge and the technology of
Speaker 1: to figure out where you're going and how to get there,
Speaker 1: and you have the right kind of watercraft, the ocean
Speaker 1: turns into the most efficient method of travel in the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's an excellent point. Now, there's one thing that has
Speaker 1: made studying Pacific islander navigation more difficult than it might
Speaker 1: otherwise be, which is that in many of these societies,
Speaker 1: or maybe all of them and definitely most of them. Uh,
Speaker 1: Navigational lore seems to have been something that was often
Speaker 1: kept secret and only shared with a small group of
Speaker 1: initiated experts. So it wasn't just that everybody in a
Speaker 1: in a Micronesian or Polynesian society knew how to navigate
Speaker 1: on the open ocean, but that you would have sort
Speaker 1: of a class of educated navigators who would have this
Speaker 1: this lore about how to get from place to place
Speaker 1: within their brains and would be passed on to the
Speaker 1: next generation of navigators. But it wouldn't be general knowledge
Speaker 1: that was shared by everyone. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 1: will make even more sense as we'd get into some
Speaker 1: of the details of say, navigating by stars and what
Speaker 1: that entailed, you realize that this required specialized training and
Speaker 1: a specialized eye, and not everybody was going to necessarily
Speaker 1: be cut out for it, and it wouldn't make sense
Speaker 1: for everyone to to invest this level of time and
Speaker 1: energy into the understanding of it, right. And it's interesting,
Speaker 1: I don't know exactly what all of the pressures leading
Speaker 1: to it being a sort of specialized bit of of
Speaker 1: exclusive lore among a special class of of navigators would be.
Speaker 1: I mean, there might have been economic concerns keeping it
Speaker 1: contained that way, or it might have just been sort of,
Speaker 1: you know, the the difficulty of training people to to
Speaker 1: have all of this knowledge in their head. I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure, but that's an interesting question as well. Now
Speaker 1: there's another thing that Lewis gets into in his book
Speaker 1: which I thought was really interesting about Again, when you
Speaker 1: just look at the problem of you look at a
Speaker 1: map of the Pacific Ocean and you think, how could
Speaker 1: it be possible to navigate you know, these vast distances
Speaker 1: without you know, modern scientific types of equipment or charts
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. And uh, And there is
Speaker 1: one aspect of it that helps make the problem seem
Speaker 1: more comprehensible, and it's this. Lewis writes that it is possible,
Speaker 1: quote to sail to almost all the inhabited islands of
Speaker 1: Oceania from Southeast Asia without once making a sea crossing
Speaker 1: longer than three hundred and ten miles. The only exceptions
Speaker 1: are Easter Island, Hawaii and New Zealand, though the most
Speaker 1: predictable routes between Eastern and Western Polynesia are also long
Speaker 1: such isolated lands apart, the majority of gaps between islands
Speaker 1: and even archipelagos are well under three hundred and ten
Speaker 1: miles and usually in the fifty to two hundred mile range.
Speaker 1: Since no one wants to cross more open ocean than necessary,
Speaker 1: it follows that most passages were of this order. So
Speaker 1: if you know your Pacific geography and you know where
Speaker 1: the islands are and how to navigate to them, the
Speaker 1: problem of crossing the vast ocean actually can sometimes be
Speaker 1: decomposed into many smaller journeys between islands, and the vast
Speaker 1: Pacific ocean problem can be broken up into a kind
Speaker 1: of stepping stone pattern. However, this does not mean that
Speaker 1: ancient Pacific islanders were incapable of longer sea voyages. They
Speaker 1: were not, and sometimes they did make them. Now, coming
Speaker 1: back to the idea that Lewis pushes back against that
Speaker 1: many of the islands of the Pacific would have been
Speaker 1: settled initially through random drifts of people who found new
Speaker 1: islands by accident while drifting about after you know, becoming
Speaker 1: lost or something like that. Lewis pushes back against that,
Speaker 1: and one line of evidence he sites is computer simulations
Speaker 1: of human spread and settlement through random drifts. He writes
Speaker 1: of this subject quote Contrary to expectations, the results showed
Speaker 1: that while accidental advent upon a number of island groups
Speaker 1: was likely, drifts could not account for certain crucial contact stages.
Speaker 1: These were virtually impossible except as exploratory probes and subsequent
Speaker 1: deliberately mounted ventures. The probability of drifts occurring was negligible
Speaker 1: or zero across the following seaways Western Melanesia to Fiji,
Speaker 1: Eastern Polynesia to Hawaii, New Zealand, or Eastern Island Eastern
Speaker 1: Polynesian contact with the America's in either direction, the probability
Speaker 1: of their having been drifts from Western to Eastern Polynesia
Speaker 1: and from Western Polynesia to the Marquesas zone was very low,
Speaker 1: and so here Lewis is arguing that not only were
Speaker 1: the navigators of the ancient Pacific Islands able to travel
Speaker 1: uh with with great accuracy between known islands and island groups,
Speaker 1: that they also appear to have mounted these deliberate, intentional
Speaker 1: exploratory ventures into new waters to find islands that had
Speaker 1: not yet been discovered, and of course, in doing so,
Speaker 1: would have the knowledge to be able to locate these
Speaker 1: islands again upon you know, going back home and then
Speaker 1: returning which again is astounding. Yeah, yeah, simply astounding. And
Speaker 1: I think a lot of these the counter ideas, the ideas, yeah,
Speaker 1: that that these had to be accidents, these you know,
Speaker 1: these people that people could possibly have set out and
Speaker 1: discovered these. I mean, it's such a I guess, a
Speaker 1: landsman approach, you know, based on a you know, it's
Speaker 1: the kind of analysis that a culture that is that
Speaker 1: is more situated on the land and and does not
Speaker 1: view the ocean as the majority of the world or
Speaker 1: their world. I keep coming back to this, uh analysis
Speaker 1: that for the for instance, the Polynesians, most of the
Speaker 1: world was ocean and and and generally that's not the
Speaker 1: sort of worldview you encounter with with with with Western civilizations.
Speaker 1: And now certainly you have certain you know, civilizations and
Speaker 1: cultures within the civilizations that are more uh nautical and
Speaker 1: more dependent on maritime traditions. But but even then it's
Speaker 1: it's it's often the case that they are they're more
Speaker 1: attached the land, they're closer to the continent, and in
Speaker 1: these cases we're dealing with with with islands within just
Speaker 1: a vast world of water. Now, there's one big question
Speaker 1: that Lewis also addresses in his book, which is the
Speaker 1: question of what happened to so much of this, this
Speaker 1: ancient Pacific navigational knowledge. Right, clearly some people in the
Speaker 1: twentieth century still possess it, but this seems to have
Speaker 1: become increasingly rare. Uh. And you could easily blame the
Speaker 1: import of foreign navigation equipment and techniques by other cultures. Right,
Speaker 1: So if you have brought in charts and compasses and
Speaker 1: things like that from from elsewhere, there's less need to
Speaker 1: rely on the ancient navigational lore to get from place
Speaker 1: to place. But unfortunately it doesn't seem like that's the
Speaker 1: only cause. It also seems that by the last few
Speaker 1: centuries many island groups in the Pacific came to be
Speaker 1: ruled by foreign empires, and those empires, in many cases
Speaker 1: simply forbade travel between islands, Lewis writes in in one
Speaker 1: footnote in the book, quote the banning by European administrations
Speaker 1: of inner island canoe travel must have been a potent
Speaker 1: cause of navigational decline. Voyages were forbidden, for instance, in
Speaker 1: the Carolines. In German times. It Illan attributed the loss
Speaker 1: of traditional lore on Nningo to the effect of the
Speaker 1: Old German regulations prohibitions remain in force today and this
Speaker 1: would have been in ninety two in among other places,
Speaker 1: the Tahiti group, and voyaging is strongly discouraged in the
Speaker 1: Gilbert's Not only must atrophy of knowledge have resulted, but
Speaker 1: deliberate voyages had to be kept secret. Advent upon another
Speaker 1: island was invariably attributed to accident. So this seems to
Speaker 1: be one of the detrimental effects of various colonialisms on
Speaker 1: on on the Pacific islands that it would have led
Speaker 1: to a steepening decline in the ancient navigational lore and
Speaker 1: the passing down of this knowledge about how to navigate
Speaker 1: by the stars and these other signs, because there was
Speaker 1: simply less opportunity for people to navigate to you know,
Speaker 1: go out in the open ocean the way they would
Speaker 1: have before. Now it's interesting too, though, that there are
Speaker 1: exceptions to this uh as well. I was looking at
Speaker 1: this on that that Hokolea website and over there that
Speaker 1: they discussed and this is also discussed at on the
Speaker 1: website for the Bishop Museum UM in Hawaii on the
Speaker 1: island of Oahu, which is an excellent museum about various
Speaker 1: Polynesian cultures. And gets into a lot of what we're
Speaker 1: discussing here. Definitely worth visiting if you if you make
Speaker 1: it out to olaho um But that as as discussed
Speaker 1: these on both of these sources, the art of deep
Speaker 1: sea voyaging in Hawaii had it been extinct for several
Speaker 1: hundred years before contact with Europeans. So this period of
Speaker 1: long voyages ended along with all contact with other Polynesian islands,
Speaker 1: and they lived in near complete isolation until seventy eight, right,
Speaker 1: So that's fascinating as well. Yeah, so there could be
Speaker 1: a number of causes there. So there's also there's like,
Speaker 1: in one sense, you could have a kind of natural
Speaker 1: atrophy of knowledge, and then there could be some loss
Speaker 1: of knowledge by by imposition of colonial rule, and then
Speaker 1: also some loss of knowledge by the introduction of alternative
Speaker 1: methods for travel. But fortunately not all the knowledge was lost.
Speaker 1: And so we have the accounts of of Lewis doing
Speaker 1: this firsthand research with with master navigators like hip Or
Speaker 1: and and Teak. And I was going to get into
Speaker 1: some of the specifics of of these navigation techniques in
Speaker 1: this episode, but we're already running kind of long, so
Speaker 1: I think maybe we should all it there and then
Speaker 1: come and talk about the navigation techniques in part two, Yeah,
Speaker 1: how to read these environmental cues and engage in environmental navigation.
Speaker 1: And then and then also some of the history of
Speaker 1: proving it out and then what what that those experiments
Speaker 1: those uh uh, those those voyages approved about history itself.
Speaker 1: So join us next time as we continue to discuss
Speaker 1: this topic. In the meantime, if you would like to
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Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
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