WEBVTT - Ancient Pacific Navigation, Part 1 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.280 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of 0:00:05.360 --> 0:00:14.520 My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:18.000 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:18.160 --> 0:00:21.160 for a couple of episodes, maybe more. We're not sure 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:24.360 how these things ultimately fall together, but we're gonna be 0:00:24.360 --> 0:00:30.240 talking about how humans discovered and ultimately colonized the Polynesian Islands, 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:33.479 places we know today as uh the Islands of Hawaii, 0:00:34.080 --> 0:00:39.680 Easter Island, New Zealand, Tonga, Samoa, Tahiti, the Cook Islands, Fiji, 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.880 uh Tuvalu, and more so in our in our information 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:47.480 and intercontinental travel age. Though I feel like these names 0:00:47.840 --> 0:00:50.720 may seem very familiar and known, even though they might 0:00:50.720 --> 0:00:54.600 be places that we also paradoxically know are very far 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:57.080 away from us. We may know that they are, in 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:03.000 many cases, you know, vastly separated from other islands. But 0:01:03.280 --> 0:01:06.399 just because we can pull up pictures of them, just 0:01:06.440 --> 0:01:08.240 because we know we could book a flight to one 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:11.680 of these if we so desired, Uh, they may seem closer, 0:01:11.720 --> 0:01:13.760 they may see the world may seem smaller than it 0:01:13.800 --> 0:01:16.240 actually is. You know, there's a very limited way of 0:01:16.240 --> 0:01:19.880 imagining what planet Earth is where you know, you say, okay, 0:01:19.920 --> 0:01:22.839 somebody picture the Earth, and and what do people picture. 0:01:22.880 --> 0:01:25.839 I think they probably picture looking down at some continental 0:01:25.920 --> 0:01:29.200 part of the Earth, maybe seeing mountain ranges, maybe seeing 0:01:29.200 --> 0:01:33.319 the Sahara Desert or something. But often people picture land, right, 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.920 they picture the continents. But if you look at Earth 0:01:35.959 --> 0:01:39.400 from space, what it's really characterized by his ocean. Ocean 0:01:39.440 --> 0:01:42.840 covers most of the Earth's surface, and there's one ocean 0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:47.160 in particular that really takes the cake. It's the Pacific Ocean. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:47.200 --> 0:01:49.120 but but I definitely wanted to drive home just how 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.720 large the territory is we're talking about here, and we're 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.040 when we're talking about the colonization of this region, we're 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:56.880 not talking about European colonization. We're talking about the original 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:01.120 human sailors who departed from Asia and gradually settled the 0:02:01.160 --> 0:02:04.800 remainder of the world, uh, setting off into the unknown. 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:10.840 But then also depending on navigation, some really fascinating navigation 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.639 techniques that we'll get into in order to uh to 0:02:14.040 --> 0:02:17.560 chart this region. So yeah, when you look at at 0:02:17.680 --> 0:02:19.880 a map of the globe, it depends on how you're 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.160 looking at it. Right, If you're you're taking a very 0:02:22.360 --> 0:02:25.959 um uh, north America centric version and a very North 0:02:25.960 --> 0:02:28.560 America centric globe. You're like, all right, there's the Earth. 0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:31.679 It's mostly US, it's mostly North America. But you turn 0:02:31.720 --> 0:02:35.200 it around, you uh, you turn it to the Pacific side, 0:02:35.680 --> 0:02:39.040 and you're looking at a water world, a true water world. 0:02:39.120 --> 0:02:41.360 You're you're looking at a side of the globe that 0:02:41.560 --> 0:02:45.720 is almost all Pacific Ocean. Because the Pacific Ocean is 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:49.480 just simply enormous. It's the largest and the deepest averse oceans. 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:54.080 We're talking sixty three million, eight hundred thousand square miles. 0:02:54.120 --> 0:02:57.120 That's approximately a hundred and sixty five million, two hundred 0:02:57.120 --> 0:03:00.519 and fifty thousand square kilometers, and it takes up one 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:03.480 third of Earth's surface or thirty percent of it, depending 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:06.200 on who's doing the calculation. It contains the deepest parts 0:03:06.200 --> 0:03:08.800 of the ocean, and it contains more than half of 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:13.400 the world's open water supply. Specifically, within the realm of 0:03:13.400 --> 0:03:17.600 of Polynesia and Micronesia, these these subdivisions of parts of Oceania, 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:19.840 which is the you know, the region of the Pacific 0:03:19.880 --> 0:03:24.120 containing the Pacific Islands where people live. Um there in 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:26.400 this part of the world. There's an author named David Lewis, 0:03:26.440 --> 0:03:28.920 whose book I'm going to refer to throughout these episodes. 0:03:29.680 --> 0:03:31.519 But there's a part of his book where he says 0:03:31.560 --> 0:03:35.160 that if you exclude New Zealand within Polynesia and Micronesia, 0:03:35.760 --> 0:03:40.040 there are two parts land to every one thousand parts water. 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:44.080 Uh So this is this is an area characterized almost 0:03:44.320 --> 0:03:47.880 entirely by water, but Polka dotted with these little hubs 0:03:47.920 --> 0:03:52.320 of land throughout. Yeah, various far flung islands that people 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:55.320 were able to to eventually colonize and and and make 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.800 their home. And it's yeah, it's it's fascinating. How again, 0:03:59.000 --> 0:04:01.480 I've I've been to I've been fortunate enough to travel 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.080 to you know, say that some of the Hawaiian islands 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:06.960 and you get there and you know they're they're amazing. 0:04:07.000 --> 0:04:10.480 But but like, I don't have the experience of of 0:04:10.640 --> 0:04:14.720 just the open Pacific, of of the of the many places, 0:04:14.800 --> 0:04:17.760 the majority of the places in the Pacific Ocean where 0:04:17.760 --> 0:04:19.760 there is no side of land, where there is only 0:04:19.800 --> 0:04:22.080 the open water. Now, you don't have to be deep 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:27.720 into historical theories of human migration to grasp the question 0:04:28.040 --> 0:04:30.359 of like looking at all these islands in the Pacific, 0:04:30.400 --> 0:04:32.520 seeing how far away they are from each other. How 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:35.960 how small a percent of the area of the Pacific 0:04:36.040 --> 0:04:38.920 Ocean the islands represent, and notice how many of them 0:04:38.960 --> 0:04:42.520 are populated by people, And wonder how on earth did 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.720 that happen? How did people find and settle on all 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.440 of these tiny islands in this vast ocean. Yeah, it's 0:04:49.480 --> 0:04:52.240 it's it's a fascinating question one that one that we're 0:04:52.240 --> 0:04:55.320 still exploring to this day. We're still figuring out. But 0:04:56.440 --> 0:04:57.920 we're gonna be getting in a little bit more into 0:04:57.960 --> 0:05:01.280 the history of it and certainly into the navigational techniques 0:05:01.320 --> 0:05:05.680 the amazing ways that these these ancient sailors made their 0:05:05.720 --> 0:05:09.400 way across the open ocean. But first of all, let's 0:05:09.440 --> 0:05:11.479 let's go ahead and drive home that while while human 0:05:11.680 --> 0:05:15.080 colonization of the Pacific Islands is one of the most 0:05:15.200 --> 0:05:20.359 recent human migration movements in our history, it still retains 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:22.800 you know, more than a few mysteries, uh, and using 0:05:22.800 --> 0:05:26.440 everything from traditional histories and linguistic analysis to climate models 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:29.440 and genetics, researchers are still continuing to try and figure 0:05:29.480 --> 0:05:34.800 out exactly how this migration occurred, when it occurred, where, uh, 0:05:35.400 --> 0:05:39.360 you know, where where we went where humans migrated to 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:43.440 first in this and so we're going to be dealing 0:05:43.440 --> 0:05:46.679 with some tentative dates here as we we roll through, 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.480 like the basic story of human migration across the Pacific. So, 0:05:50.640 --> 0:05:55.560 according to Linda Noreene Schaefer, in Maritime Southeast Asia to 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:57.200 five hundred, this was a book that came out in 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:04.120 the ancestors of Malo, Polynesians left the mainland to settle Um, 0:06:04.720 --> 0:06:09.400 the island of Taiwan around four thousand BC, and from 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.360 there they moved into what is now the Philippines and Indonesia, 0:06:13.080 --> 0:06:15.599 and then during the third millennium BC, they moved on 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:19.400 to settle the islands uh And and Penninsula peninsulas of 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:24.200 what Schaffer refers to as Southeast Asia's maritime realm, and 0:06:24.240 --> 0:06:26.760 the people who remained there came to be known as 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.640 the Malays. So from here we see movement of the 0:06:29.800 --> 0:06:33.240 same people's further out into the ocean uh the very 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:37.440 movement of human migration that would eventually become the Polynesians. 0:06:37.920 --> 0:06:41.560 By fifteen hundred BC, they had reached as far as 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:45.719 the Bismarck Archipelago north the east of New Guinea and 0:06:45.880 --> 0:06:49.680 Um and Schaefer rights that within a few centuries they 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:53.680 had spread to West Polynesia, that's Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and 0:06:53.839 --> 0:06:59.080 Polynesian sailors, explorers and colonists continued and eventually they were 0:06:59.080 --> 0:07:02.560 eventually reached and colonized the far more remote eastward islands 0:07:02.600 --> 0:07:06.440 of Hawaii, um what is now New Zealand and what 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:08.880 we have also come to refer to as Easter Island 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:11.720 or Rapa Nui. All right, so now let's try and 0:07:11.720 --> 0:07:14.160 put some dates on all of this. But of course 0:07:14.360 --> 0:07:16.560 all of this is UH is playing out over a 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:18.680 long period of time, and it's still an area of 0:07:18.720 --> 0:07:21.800 ongoing study and discussions, so these dates are tendative. In 0:07:21.920 --> 0:07:26.320 Schaefer's work, some of the estimated dates she sites include 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:31.520 Rapa Nui around five hundred CE, although estimates seem I've 0:07:31.560 --> 0:07:34.000 seen estimates that suggest as early as three hundred C 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:38.440 and then UH. In nineteen nine, the University of Hawaii's 0:07:38.880 --> 0:07:43.440 Dennis um Kawajarada suggested the following dates. He says, Okay, 0:07:43.520 --> 0:07:46.640 hundreds and gathers inhabited Australia and New Guinea by fifty 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:51.040 thousand years ago, and then around between sixteen hundred and 0:07:51.080 --> 0:07:55.760 twelve hundred b c E. A cultural complex called Lapita 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.360 had spread from New Guinea in Melanesia to as far 0:07:59.400 --> 0:08:02.360 east as e g. Samoa and Tonga, and then Polynesian 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:05.040 culture developed at the eastern edge of this region. And 0:08:05.040 --> 0:08:07.760 then he says that around three hundred b C or earlier, 0:08:07.840 --> 0:08:11.200 seafares from Samoa and Tonga discovered and settled islands to 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:13.880 the east what are known now it's the Cook Islands, 0:08:14.200 --> 0:08:18.640 uh Tahiti, Nui, uh To, Omotos and Hiva. And then 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:21.600 around three hundred sea or earlier, voyagers from central or 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:25.360 eastern Polynesia discovered in settled eastern island. And then around 0:08:25.400 --> 0:08:29.000 four hundred sea or earlier, voyagers from the Cook Islands Tahiti, 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.520 Nua and or Hiva settled Hawaii. And then around one 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:35.839 thousand CEE or earlier, he wrote that the voyagers from 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:39.480 the Society Islands and or the Cook Islands settled what 0:08:39.559 --> 0:08:41.520 is now in New Zealand. Now again these are just 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:44.040 tentative dates. Um there. You know, there's been a lot 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:46.280 of other work. For instance, according to the University of 0:08:46.280 --> 0:08:50.640 Hawaii at Manoa anthropologist Terry Hunt, and this is via 0:08:50.960 --> 0:08:54.760 Hokalua dot com, which will refer back to that website 0:08:54.760 --> 0:08:56.960 some more in the future. Uh they were part of 0:08:56.960 --> 0:08:59.640 a radio carbon study looking at artifacts from the island, 0:09:00.000 --> 0:09:02.680 and they adjusted some of the suggested timelines based on 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:06.080 that work, ultimately arguing for a more rapid and recent 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:11.320 colonization of the outer islands. Specifically, he proposed Samoa around 0:09:11.400 --> 0:09:15.640 eight hundred b c e the Central Society Islands between 0:09:15.679 --> 0:09:20.400 ten and eleven twenty, and dispersal into New Zealand, Hawaii 0:09:20.520 --> 0:09:23.640 and Rapa Nui and other locations between eleven ninety and 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:27.640 twelve nineties c e. UM and I've seen twelve CE 0:09:27.760 --> 0:09:30.760 is sometimes cited as the most recent possibility for Rappa 0:09:30.840 --> 0:09:33.720 Newly colonization. And so yeah, I know we're hitting every 0:09:33.720 --> 0:09:35.920 one of a lot of dates here. I highly suggest 0:09:36.440 --> 0:09:38.240 going out on your own and finding some of these 0:09:38.240 --> 0:09:40.520 sources and pouring over them in more detail if you 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:42.480 want to get get a clear picture of how this 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:45.960 is going. There are also some wonderful visual aids depicting uh, 0:09:46.000 --> 0:09:50.040 you know, exactly how uh these waves of migration might 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.400 have looked uh, And I'm always fascinated by those uh 0:09:53.840 --> 0:09:55.679 even though they you know, they often change again, they're 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.720 subject to the same uh level of change that we 0:09:58.760 --> 0:10:01.520 see with some of the pop sable dates for arrivals 0:10:01.520 --> 0:10:05.000 and colonizations, etcetera. And again it's a very exciting area 0:10:05.000 --> 0:10:07.160 of study, and you'll you'll see papers arguing for the 0:10:07.559 --> 0:10:09.760 for for other things as well, the likes of South 0:10:09.800 --> 0:10:15.080 American and even Antarctic contact by various Polynesian people um 0:10:15.480 --> 0:10:17.560 and uh and I it's my understanding I didn't go 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:18.880 deep into some of those. I think some of those 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:20.920 are are kind of controversial or some of them and 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:23.679 certainly some of the evidence is maybe not as as solid, 0:10:23.800 --> 0:10:25.880 But it just to give you an idea of where 0:10:25.960 --> 0:10:28.319 some of the research is going today and what people 0:10:28.320 --> 0:10:32.400 are looking at. But regardless of the exact dates, you know, 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:37.240 we can't discount the wonder and accomplishment of the whole scenario. 0:10:37.600 --> 0:10:40.760 You know that this this was this last age of 0:10:40.840 --> 0:10:46.240 true human um exodus, true human discovery and colonization, visiting 0:10:46.280 --> 0:10:51.239 places that humans had never been before, creating a foothold 0:10:51.280 --> 0:10:54.680 of human civilization in places that had belonged only um 0:10:54.760 --> 0:10:56.560 you know, to various animals before and in the case 0:10:56.600 --> 0:11:00.160 of the Logan Islands, places where the no mammals had 0:11:00.160 --> 0:11:03.280 ever arrived there, that had not flown or swam through 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:04.880 the seas you know that you had to have been 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:07.520 a bat or a seal. I want to read a 0:11:07.600 --> 0:11:11.960 quote from from the University of Hawaii's Dennis Colorada here 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.240 for which he he really sums a lot of this 0:11:15.400 --> 0:11:18.880 up um and again this is from there. That hoku 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:22.760 lea website at hokala dot com. That's h o k 0:11:23.760 --> 0:11:27.640 u l e a dot com. Uh, he writes. Quote. 0:11:27.640 --> 0:11:30.679 The Polynesian migration to Hawaii was part of one of 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.559 the most remarkable achievements of humanity, the discovery and settlement 0:11:34.559 --> 0:11:37.560 of the remote, widely scattered islands of the Central Pacific. 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:41.520 The migration began before the birth of Christ. While Europeans 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:44.680 were sailing close to the coastlines of continents before developing 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.839 navigational instruments that would allow them to venture out into 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.720 the open ocean. Voyagers from Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa began 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:54.560 to settle islands in an ocean area of over ten 0:11:54.640 --> 0:11:58.000 million square miles. The settlement took a thousand years to 0:11:58.040 --> 0:12:01.360 complete and involved finding and fixing in mind the position 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:05.280 of islands, sometimes less than a mile in diameter, on 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:08.600 on which the highest landmark was a coconut tree. By 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.680 the time European explorers into the Pacific Ocean in the 0:12:11.720 --> 0:12:15.760 sixteenth century. Almost all the habitable islands had been settled 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:20.400 for hundreds of years. It's truly remarkable. Yeah, especially when you, 0:12:20.440 --> 0:12:22.480 I mean you get beyond the exact timelines and you 0:12:22.520 --> 0:12:26.200 start looking at how they traveled and how they navigated, UM, 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:29.320 and what these islands were like when they found them. Uh, 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:30.839 we're gonna be you know, we're gonna get into the 0:12:30.840 --> 0:12:33.680 moment more into the navigation models UM, either later in 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:37.120 this episode or in the next. But as Cabajorada points out, 0:12:37.280 --> 0:12:40.640 what we're talking about voyages conducted entirely in canoes made 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:44.560 from wood and coconut fiber, constructed with tools made from bone, 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:48.680 rock and coral. They use sails woven from coconut or 0:12:49.080 --> 0:12:52.480 or pandana sleeves, and when no win was available, they paddled. 0:12:52.840 --> 0:12:55.400 And these were dangerous voyages as well, not only at 0:12:55.400 --> 0:12:58.120 open sea, but when you arrived on some of these places, 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:02.920 it's easy to imagine the sort of stereotypical like Paradise Island. Uh, 0:13:02.920 --> 0:13:05.320 you know vision where Okay, you've reached the island. The 0:13:05.400 --> 0:13:07.600 dangerous part is done. Now you're in this place. It's 0:13:07.720 --> 0:13:12.480 lush and full of life. But that's not like when 0:13:12.520 --> 0:13:14.600 you get there, Yeah, like there's gonna be you know, 0:13:14.640 --> 0:13:17.120 a bunch of animals ready for the picking, and you 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:19.240 know there there. If you get into specifics, there are 0:13:19.280 --> 0:13:23.160 some cases where there's some sort of of of of 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:26.280 of of natural, naturally occurring animal on that island or 0:13:26.320 --> 0:13:29.400 the waters around it that are perhaps easier pickings. But 0:13:29.440 --> 0:13:32.600 in other cases you're dealing with environments where again like 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:35.880 they're they're just no mammals, there are no large meaty birds. 0:13:36.400 --> 0:13:38.560 Uh you know, they're they're desolate there playing In some 0:13:38.640 --> 0:13:42.280 cases there it was very difficult for humans to you know, 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:46.000 find the resources they needed to survive unless they, of 0:13:46.040 --> 0:13:49.200 course brought them with them on voyages, which adds this 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:51.920 other wrinkle to these to these voyages that you would 0:13:51.920 --> 0:13:55.640 have to bring things like pigs, chickens, etcetera. At the 0:13:55.679 --> 0:13:57.480 same time, I want to drive home that there's no 0:13:57.600 --> 0:14:00.680 one island environment here. There's a wide ver arriety in 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.000 the sorts of islands and island environments you encounter across 0:14:04.080 --> 0:14:06.439 this vast region. Uh So the story is going to 0:14:06.480 --> 0:14:09.640 be a little different each time. So again, in many 0:14:09.679 --> 0:14:13.000 cases they had to bring important plant or animal species 0:14:13.040 --> 0:14:15.080 with them, which of course is the same story you 0:14:15.080 --> 0:14:18.000 see in land based migration, except with the challenges of 0:14:18.200 --> 0:14:20.160 an open boat. And so you'd end up with this 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:23.200 first wave of invasive species on the island. And these 0:14:23.240 --> 0:14:26.320 are often called canoe plants and canoe animals because again 0:14:26.360 --> 0:14:30.880 that's how they reach their destinations. And ultimately we're talking dogs, pigs, chickens, 0:14:30.880 --> 0:14:34.840 but also plants such as sugar cane, banana, coconut, taro, 0:14:34.880 --> 0:14:36.800 and bab boo. So some of these plants that are 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.760 so you know, linked in the mind and linked culturally 0:14:39.840 --> 0:14:42.760 to these islands that you have to remind yourself that 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:44.880 they were not always there. They were brought with them 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.520 with the people who settled these islands. Yeah, though personally 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:50.720 right now my mind is fixated on the idea of 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.840 having to make long sea voyages with like a canoe 0:14:53.840 --> 0:14:57.440 full of chickens. Yeah, but it it was done. And uh, 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:59.760 and as we'll get into much later, you know, in 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:02.480 order or to prove that these voyages were possible, they 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:04.480 had to do things like bringing animals with them on 0:15:04.560 --> 0:15:08.360 the test voyages. So, uh, it's it's fascinating now on 0:15:08.400 --> 0:15:11.680 this topic of of the the environments on these different 0:15:11.680 --> 0:15:15.160 islands and how they weren't fully stocked life nourishing buffets. 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:18.160 I thought that that David Lewis made an excellent point 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:21.240 in that book that you you mentioned briefly earlier. Oh yeah, 0:15:21.280 --> 0:15:23.120 So to name this book, I'm gonna be referring to 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:25.480 it throughout these episodes. It's one I've been reading that 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:28.440 is a seminal work in the history of studies of 0:15:28.480 --> 0:15:32.040 Pacific island navigation. And this was originally published by the 0:15:32.120 --> 0:15:35.160 University of Hawaii Press in nineteen seventy two. It was 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:39.200 by a medical doctor, sailor and scholar named David Lewis, 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:42.160 and it's called We the Navigators The Ancient Art of 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:45.720 Land Finding in the Pacific. I was published in seventy two, 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:48.760 but I think updated with some subsequent editions at least 0:15:48.760 --> 0:15:50.680 in nineteen ninety four, and it may have gone through 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:53.280 other editions since then. But this is a really interesting 0:15:53.320 --> 0:15:59.000 book because its studies traditional Pacific navigation and land finding techniques, 0:15:59.040 --> 0:16:02.040 not just by the the indirect evidence of trying to 0:16:02.120 --> 0:16:05.000 like look at the history, but actually by putting them 0:16:05.000 --> 0:16:10.520 to direct experiments, so navigating with experienced master navigators from 0:16:10.560 --> 0:16:15.840 various specific islands and studying their techniques firsthand. Yeah. Yeah. 0:16:15.880 --> 0:16:19.280 And and the point that that Lewis makes about the 0:16:19.320 --> 0:16:22.640 stark environments was really neat because it meant that the 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.480 dangerous voyage to get to these islands and establish yourself 0:16:25.480 --> 0:16:28.360 on these islands. You it didn't mean that you could stop. 0:16:28.600 --> 0:16:31.280 In many cases, you would have to keep making voyages 0:16:31.320 --> 0:16:34.360 because there were certain resources that you could not get 0:16:34.640 --> 0:16:38.160 at the new island. But we're worth the dangerous journey 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.640 to acquire. Uh. The example that that Lewis brings up 0:16:41.720 --> 0:16:43.960 is the lack of hard stone on the Cook Island 0:16:44.000 --> 0:16:47.680 of Puka Puka, requiring journeys to take place, uh two 0:16:47.680 --> 0:16:50.240 islands where hard stone could be acquired for use in 0:16:50.360 --> 0:16:53.920 vital tool construction. And he writes that these would have 0:16:53.960 --> 0:16:57.640 been complex trading cycles that would have also been influenced 0:16:57.640 --> 0:17:00.480 by you know, other human factors like the since you know, 0:17:00.560 --> 0:17:03.800 the desire for adventure, the um or, and also the 0:17:04.200 --> 0:17:07.800 necessity of exile, which I found interesting, like ultimately the 0:17:07.840 --> 0:17:11.280 idea of having a complex culture and cultural dynamics on 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:14.520 a single island. What what where do you send people? 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.639 Where do people run to? Uh? If if there if 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:20.280 there's some sort of political turmoil on the island, so 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:30.160 contact sometimes remains in place because of that as well. Now, 0:17:30.200 --> 0:17:33.240 before we get into the specifics of of of navigation 0:17:33.480 --> 0:17:38.439 in among Pacific islanders and the colonizing of Polynesia, I 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:41.480 thought we might briefly touch on some of the basics 0:17:41.520 --> 0:17:46.000 of sailing and navigation is larger trends in human technology. Um, 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:50.280 we could easily do a proper even multi episode invention 0:17:50.359 --> 0:17:52.959 episode about ships. But here are some of the key 0:17:53.080 --> 0:17:55.879 dates provided in the seventy grade Inventions of the Ancient 0:17:55.880 --> 0:17:58.600 World by Brian Fagan at all um a book I 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:01.600 refer to that refer to lot uh because it's really 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:04.080 good and again highly recommend people pick up a copy 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:06.720 of it. Um but A Fagan and the various co 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:09.760 authors that he worked on with the various sailing and 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:14.719 ship based chapters, points out that seagoing watercraft just in 0:18:14.800 --> 0:18:18.480 general dates back probably before forty thousand b c E. 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:22.280 In Southeast Asia and Indonesia. We see long boats from 0:18:22.320 --> 0:18:26.280 Neanderthal cultures from seventy two hundred b c E. And 0:18:26.320 --> 0:18:30.840 we see long grafts from seventh century BC and Mesopotamia. Again, 0:18:30.880 --> 0:18:33.080 these are just general dates based on some of the 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:35.960 earliest evidence we have, and then as far as things 0:18:36.040 --> 0:18:38.800 like plank boats and that goes back to like three 0:18:39.160 --> 0:18:43.040 thousand BC in egypt Um. And then finally we get 0:18:43.119 --> 0:18:45.159 up to the frame first boats in the second and 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:47.639 third century c E and in my in what is 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:52.040 now all England. And as far as sailing, we have 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:55.680 depictions of sales from thirty one b C. In Egypt. 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:58.960 We see two masted ships from sixth century in b C. 0:18:59.440 --> 0:19:02.440 B C in Egypt, and the oldest surviving sale comes 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:05.800 from the second century b C in Egypt. But again 0:19:05.840 --> 0:19:08.439 these are just some of the oldest, uh, you know, 0:19:08.480 --> 0:19:12.840 direct evidence that we have or depictions, descriptions, etcetera. As 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:16.120 Fagan points out in the section on navigation with Sean mcgrail, 0:19:16.600 --> 0:19:19.840 author of Boats of the World and professor of maritime archaeology, 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:23.600 the earliest voyages for our ancestors would have remained within 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:26.560 side of land. Landmarks and sea marks would have been 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:30.119 key to navigation, and we see this reflected in recorded 0:19:30.240 --> 0:19:34.119 traditions and classical and medieval sailing manuals. Makes sense, right, 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:36.040 I mean, it's like if if any of us were 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:37.919 to set out on a boat into the water, I 0:19:37.920 --> 0:19:39.960 would want to keep land in sight. I need to 0:19:39.960 --> 0:19:43.760 know where that land is. So all of this early uh. 0:19:43.800 --> 0:19:47.399 You know, oceanic activity would have taken place withinside of land, 0:19:47.600 --> 0:19:51.520 and we depended upon things you can notice on land. Uh. 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:53.840 You know your frame of reference reference was based on 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.800 the place you came from. Sure, But what happens when 0:19:56.800 --> 0:19:59.719 you leave side of land. Well, by the mid UH 0:19:59.800 --> 0:20:03.400 set at millennium BC, sailors in the South Pacific were 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:05.480 of course doing this by means of what we call 0:20:05.840 --> 0:20:10.400 environmental navigation. We'll be getting into this at length. Uh, 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:12.480 but you know, at this point you have to travel 0:20:12.520 --> 0:20:15.040 beyond dependence on coastal landmarks and sea marks. But that 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:17.800 doesn't mean that there's not an order and a language 0:20:17.840 --> 0:20:20.320 to the open ocean. And for those who had the 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:23.760 wisdom and the observational skills of the accumulated knowledge of 0:20:23.800 --> 0:20:27.560 their ancestors, they could plot their way by these cues, 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.119 They could recognize them, they could read the map of 0:20:30.200 --> 0:20:33.240 the ocean. Now we'll get into the details of this 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:35.680 in a bit, but as Fagan and mcgrail point out, 0:20:35.800 --> 0:20:40.160 you'll find indirect references to environmental navigation methodologies in Homer's 0:20:40.200 --> 0:20:43.440 the Odyssey, as well as in the medieval text of 0:20:43.520 --> 0:20:46.800 the Life of St. Brendan, and environmental navigation would have 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:50.960 been used in some form worldwide by the first millennium CE, 0:20:51.240 --> 0:20:53.960 and that's when instruments began to pop up. That's when 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:58.800 we begin to use these various technological things to help us, uh, 0:20:59.040 --> 0:21:01.560 make our way across the open water. But with the 0:21:01.640 --> 0:21:05.320 navigators of the Pacific Islands, we're talking again about peak 0:21:05.960 --> 0:21:10.560 environmental navigation, a level of advancement that exceeded anything else 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:12.439 in the rest of the world, anything else that the 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:14.280 rest of the world was capable of or had been 0:21:14.320 --> 0:21:17.879 capable of, um aweing some of the first Europeans to 0:21:18.000 --> 0:21:22.040 encounter such techniques and for a while seeming simply impossible 0:21:22.080 --> 0:21:25.680 to some Western minds. Uh, you know that for a 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.000 while it just seemed impossible that, oh, the people who 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:31.200 were you know, that live in these islands, they must 0:21:31.240 --> 0:21:33.720 be here by accident, they must be here by mistake, 0:21:34.080 --> 0:21:37.760 and they're merely survivors of the ocean. They're not masters 0:21:37.760 --> 0:21:40.640 of its navigation. But as we'll get to they were. 0:21:40.680 --> 0:21:43.359 They were the masters. That's exactly right. And that's actually 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:45.679 one of the main points that David Lewis makes in 0:21:45.720 --> 0:21:49.560 this book We the Navigators. Um, he was responding in 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:52.600 some ways to kind of trends in scholarship on the 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.040 on the settlement of the Pacific islands that had tended 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.080 to say that, well, a large number of these islands 0:21:59.160 --> 0:22:01.920 must have just been edtled and discovered by accident, right 0:22:01.960 --> 0:22:05.440 that maybe a fisherman or traders were out at sea 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.560 and they became lost, they drifted off course, and just 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:11.959 by happenstance they drifted to new islands that hadn't been 0:22:11.960 --> 0:22:15.240 settled before, and then having discovered them, those islands could 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:18.080 be settled. Of course, it is possible that some islands 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.040 were discovered this way, but Lewis pushes back, arguing that 0:22:21.080 --> 0:22:25.080 there's actually a pretty good evidence for a a program 0:22:25.080 --> 0:22:29.640 of deliberate exploration and very accurate navigation by the sailors 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.280