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