

The original colonists of the Pacific - pg
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/03/people-pacific/smith-text

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bootload
_".. While Cook was impressed with the speed of the Polynesian canoes—they
could literally sail circles around his ships—he came to question the
islanders' ability to make long, intentional sea voyages. He records an
account of a group of Tahitians who, helpless in the face of a contrary wind
and unable to set a course for home, drifted hundreds of miles off course and
were marooned on Aitutaki, in what is now the Cook Islands ..."_

This idea is conflicting with skills of Joseph Banks "exotic souvenir",
Tupaia. There is no doubt Tupaia played a big part in filling in the gaps of
Cooks maps with his innate knowledge of 1000 of so South Pacific Islands. You
can't get the kind of cartographic knowledge without someone having observed
the island and recorded them. So the question is how? Another thing to
remember is Cook was the "master navigator". His idea of a long sustained
voyage was to sail in 30m ship from Plymouth to Australia, New Zealand
followed by a leisurely stop over in Hawaii. Cook also had access the latest
navigational aids like the "Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer" in his second
voyage.

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boucher
Linking to the print version of this article annoyingly brings up the print
dialogue every time I load the page.

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pg
It's worse otherwise.

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boucher
I don't mind paging through sites nearly as much as everyone else seems to.

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pchristensen
It sounds like the expansion of America over the Midwest (replace seas with
prairies, and native plants and animals with Indians).

The book Hawai'i by James Michener is a good historical fiction about the
natural and cultural history of Hawai'i (including the early Polynesians)

<http://www.amazon.com/o/asin/0449213358/pchristensen-20>

