
How Ancient Humans Reached Remote South Pacific Islands - pcl
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/02/science/south-pacific-islands-migration.html
======
NelsonMinar
This article is thin on details. But there's a lot of good stuff written about
Polynesian navigation technology. I particularly liked the book Vaka Moana,
which has an approachable and intelligent description of boats, cultures,
navigation techniques, etc. [https://www.amazon.com/Vaka-Moana-Voyages-
Ancestors-Settleme...](https://www.amazon.com/Vaka-Moana-Voyages-Ancestors-
Settlement/dp/0824832132/)

One thing I took away from the book was that Polynesian colonization follows a
pattern that looks deliberate. Specifically that they would depart on a voyage
against the winds and currents, the hard way, so that they could make a swift
return if they couldn't find the destination. Or at least that's what some
computer modelling of the spread of Polynesian culture says. That finding is a
bit at odds with this NYT article, not sure what that means.

Some other links for this NYT article:

The PNAS page (abstract only, paywall)
[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/10/18/1612426113](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/10/18/1612426113)

Another summary with more details [https://around.uoregon.edu/content/study-
finds-climate-helpe...](https://around.uoregon.edu/content/study-finds-
climate-helped-guide-early-pacific-seafarers)

~~~
pcmaffey
Also, testicular navigation was a thing. More sensitive current detection...

~~~
quakeguy
I had no clue...

[http://www.hawaii-nation.org/gis/8-conclusion.html](http://www.hawaii-
nation.org/gis/8-conclusion.html)

Thx!

~~~
tonyarkles
This explains in more detail how it works:
[https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/friends/Technology_of_Oceania.pdf](https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/friends/Technology_of_Oceania.pdf)

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matthoiland
This is old news. We've known since 1830 that a man named Nephi built a boat,
and his father Lehi was given a golden compass ball called the Liahona that
directed them from the Arabian Peninsula to South America where they built a
massive civilization. After 400-500 years a curious man named Hagoth built
another boat and settled Polynesia. It's all documented in the historical tome
called the Book of Mormon. [Source: Former Mormon :)]

~~~
vyrotek
Your comment absolutely made my day! I just thought I'd point out that the
specific geographic locations you mentioned are _technically_ not official
doctrine but are personal beliefs held by definitely many members. [Source:
Current Mormon who prescribes to alternative theories]

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davidw
I've always wondered what the process was like for the people who made it to
someplace like Rapa Nui (Easter Island), which is a tiny speck in the middle
of a vast ocean. Was it some kind of shotgun approach where a lot of
expeditions were launched, and a very few hit a target and the others either
perished or turned around?

~~~
CydeWeys
Islands leave distinctive cloud formations in their wake, sometimes stretching
many hundreds of miles. Here's an example from satellite photography:
[http://m.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?i...](http://m.earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=86978)

A popular theory is that Polynesian navigators would hone in on these cloud
patterns in the sky, treating them as the big arrows in the sky pointing to
land that they essentially are.

~~~
chetanahuja
"Islands leave distinctive cloud formations in their wake"

Only islands with high peaks, which means most likely, volcanic islands. Which
happens to be true for large islands in the pacific. As opposed to purely
coral islands which rise just above the sea level.

~~~
ararar
Very true. However, flat, forested islands can reflect a greenish color onto
whatever clouds might be above them.

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danieltillett
I have always found the history of the population of Madagascar amazing [1].
Who would have guessed that people from Borneo would be the first people to
arrive.

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madagascar)

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vixen99
The answer was suggested back in 1947 by Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-tiki expedition
which demonstrated how it was possible to sail the 4,000 miles or more across
the Pacific from South America to the Polynesian Islands in a simple raft.

~~~
curtis
The problem is that the Polynesians appear to have sailed thousands of miles
across the Pacific going the other direction. In Heyerdahl's day this was hard
to explain because the Polynesians would have had to sail against the
prevailing winds and currents. The problem for Heyerdahl's theory is that
archaeological, linguistic, and genetic evidence indicates that Polynesia was
pretty much settled west to east.

One thing we know now is that it is possible to sail Polynesian voyaging
canoes pretty much any direction you want to go, at least over long distances.
The Polynesian Voyaging Society has sailed Hōkūleʻa [1][2] all over Polynesia
at this point and in fact they've sailed her all the way to the North Atlantic
since then.

Back in Kon Tiki's day, the performance of Polynesian voyaging canoes wasn't
well understood. They can't tack near as well as a modern sailboat, but they
can tack to 45 degrees off the wind. And although it's true that prevailing
winds in the South Pacific blow east to west, they still vary quite a lot in
their exact direction. This means it's possible to sail to an island east of
your starting point in a voyaging canoe even though the prevailing winds and
currents are against you. Also it turns out the the prevailing winds can
completely change directions during El Niño years, which happen with some
frequency, making west to east sailing a lot easier. [3]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokulea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hokulea)

[2] [http://www.hokulea.com/](http://www.hokulea.com/)

[3] I don't have a good citation for this last paragraph, but it might be from
Ben Finney's paper "Anomalous Westerlies, El Niño, and the Colonization of
Polynesia",
[https://www.jstor.org/stable/677659?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...](https://www.jstor.org/stable/677659?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents)

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saiya-jin
I thought these settlements were gradual and caused by lack of ocean/much
shorter distances to cross due to polar caps capturing much more water in the
past.

ie Russia and Alaska were supposedly connected, same for Britain vs Europe
mainland, and also South pacific to some extent.

It doesn't explain all cases (ie mentioned easter island, no clue there), but
this might have many reasons

~~~
goodcanadian
The colonization of the Pacific happened very recently in the terms of people
spreading around the world: well after the last ice age. According to
wikipedia, the first human settlement in Fiji was perhaps 3500 BCE. Hawaii
wasn't settled until sometime around 1000 CE. The sea level would have been
nearly the same as today and distance between islands would be, for practical
purposes, identical.

I have heard/read that changing weather patterns had an effect on the movement
of people around the Pacific, making some journeys easier or harder during
different periods. Long distance voyaging had essentially ceased again by the
time Europeans were exploring the Pacific. Unfortunately, I can't provide a
reference.

~~~
ktRolster
_Long distance voyaging had essentially ceased again by the time Europeans
were exploring the Pacific. Unfortunately, I can 't provide a reference._

In Polynesia that's mostly true (although Samoa to Tonga is rather far, so
depends on what you mean by 'long'). In Hawaii, the home and voyage of the
ancestors was a place in legendary history.

In Micronesia though, there are still a few people who can do long-distance
voyages.

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40acres
So what was the technology?

~~~
calebsurfs
The ability to sail a boat up wind. The boats they used, catamarans, have a
hard time sailing less than 90 degrees to the wind even today.

~~~
civilian
Your comment is a little ambiguous--- we've built modern-day catamarans that
can definitely sail upwind. I think you're saying that the catamarans that
Polynesians have built were never able to go up wind.

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olivercreashe
Article should be called:

"How _we think_ ancient humans reached remote ..."

We will never know without having been there, just like the bering straight
migration "fact" has now been debunked, to name an example.

It is very disappointing how sbjective and arrogant researchers have become,
from astronomers to psychologists, and political scientists at the top.

We don't know many things, we _think_ that is how they work based on what we
see, but they never say that and it becomes the master narrative.

~~~
mturmon
Usually, to be generally accepted, hypotheses like in the OP require multiple
independent lines of evidence. (E.g., for human migrations, DNA, linguistic
traces, and technical artifacts could serve as independent lines.)

Publishing this article in a wide forum like PNAS is the way of asking the
community at large for reactions, for or against. If it had been a more
narrowly discipline-specific article, it would appear elsewhere, like _Oikos_
or _Oecologia_.

