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