
The greatest migration: the history and mystery of Polynesian navigation (2019) - Thevet
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-reviews-thompson-explores-the-history-and-mystery-of-polynesian-navigation/
======
SkyMarshal
Decent article, though a little thin on details. For example, alludes to but
doesn't mention Polynesian wayfinding techniques, which are quite fascinating.
The Polynesians developed some really clever nautical wayfinding techniques
without instruments, or with rudimentary, imprecise, non-machined ones, that
enabled them to reliably traverse the islands of the South Pacific, even to
remote ones like Tahiti. Lots of articles on "Polynesian wayfinding" across
the web, and a great exhibition on it at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in case
you happen to be in the vicinity.

[https://www.bishopmuseum.org/?s=wayfind](https://www.bishopmuseum.org/?s=wayfind)

Probably the best observation in the article, is the way theories can
potentially become distorted the further away in time they are from their
subject of study:

 _> GAZETTE: The book deals also with the flip side of that wondrousness, the
Western skepticism that an “unsophisticated,” “primitive” people could manage
this feat. What underlies Western skepticism? Was it also wonder at the
distances involved? Or was it rooted in racism, in ignorance? Why not just
take folks at their word when they say they did it?

THOMPSON: There was a lot of skepticism, and I think that was basically rooted
in a sense of Western superiority and classic colonialism and that set of
attitudes. But one of the things that I think is misunderstood is that this
was not a uniform view. There are periods, at the end of the 18th century and
in the 19th century, when Europeans who were interested in this subject were
actually not that skeptical at all of Polynesian voyaging capacity.

Some of the 19th-century figures I write about took for granted — completely —
that Polynesians had been the greatest navigators ever. They were convinced
that they had sailed these distances and they had gone back and forth
repeatedly.

What I saw that sort of surprised me, because it ran contrary to the
conventional wisdom, was a rise in skepticism in the 20th century. My
interpretation is that this is because we’re actually moving away from
understanding the people. We’re moving away in time from real contact with the
islanders and a real understanding of what they were doing.

The earlier theorists of the 19th century had many bad ideas, but they did
believe in Polynesian voyaging. And they were quite close to the people. They
spoke the languages. They often married into these cultures. They were
intimate with them. And they lived in a period before there was so much lost
knowledge. So that was an interesting aspect of the story that I didn’t
foresee._

~~~
WalterBright
> Why not just take folks at their word when they say they did it?

It is entirely reasonable to expect evidence of extraordinary claims before
accepting them as genuine.

> a rise in skepticism in the 20th century

And a huge rise in scientific understanding and technological progress because
of a willingness to expect evidence rather than taking things on faith.

~~~
EdwardDiego
> It is entirely reasonable to expect evidence of extraordinary claims before
> accepting them as genuine.

I would say that the Polynesian inhabitants of Aotearoa New Zealand, Ha'waii,
and Rapa Nui/Easter Island are all the evidence one needs.

~~~
WalterBright
That is indeed evidence they got there by boat, although before DNA comparison
it wasn't clear where they came from. (DNA sequencing has revolutionized
determining where people came from and who various groups are related to.) It
is not sufficient evidence of repeatable navigational skills. Setting out in a
boat and luckily happening upon an island is very different from reliably
navigating back and forth.

There are modern examples of people in lifeboats drifting incredible distances
in the Pacific, with zero navigation.

People didn't accept that the Wrights had flown, either, until the evidence
was indisputable. And rightly so, as it was an extraordinary accomplishment.

------
pat_trick
I did my MS thesis around this exact topic, a VR simulation of Native Hawaiian
Wayfinding:
[https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/pres_a_0030...](https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/pres_a_00301)

It should be available for download sometime this year, currently working on
the HTC Vive, being ported to the Oculus platform.

Also actively participating with the Polynesian Voyaging Society here in
Honolulu to prep for participation in a Tahiti sail later this year.

------
qchris
I happened to read "Sea People" this past fall, and it's one that I'd
recommend to anyone interested in more or less any of the areas it touches on.
The author took an approach of not just explaining what information was
learned, but the how it was learned, and did so in a way that I felt made
things really accessible, though not at the expense of making things hand-wavy
in her explanation (imho, anyway).

Polynesian exploration and the logistics involved (both from a Polynesian and
European point of view), interaction between dissimilar cultures trying to
understand each other, historical re-creation, and more, plus some of what I
think is simply good writing. It's not a topic I'd looked into much
beforehand, but found it a really interesting and enjoyable read. If anyone
finds that the interview in the article sparks an interest, I think you could
definitely do worse.

------
jandrese
I've wondered if the geography of Polynesia didn't help in this regard. The
area is a series of small islands out in a big ocean. People who wanted to
move between the islands would gain a lot of experience in sea navigation in
whatever their ships of the day were. Enough experience plus the human desire
to explore means longer trips could mostly be a factor in how much food and
fresh water you can pack with you.

By comparison their contemporaries had the luxury of being on the same
landmass so they could stick to coastal waters and inland seas for the entire
journey. They were not forced to learn the harsh lessens of the open oceans
until much later so they have this mindset that open ocean sailing is a
monumental feat that requires advanced technology.

As for why it was lost. The article speculates that it was climate change, but
I think the lack of a system of writing is probably even more to blame. Some
disaster kills off the school of deep ocean navigation and the skills are lost
as the old sailors die off.

~~~
JusticeJuice
>As for why it was lost. The article speculates that it was climate change,
but I think the lack of a system of writing is probably even more to blame.
Some disaster kills off the school of deep ocean navigation and the skills are
lost as the old sailors die off.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. When James Cook came through
Polynesia, he brought syphilis which ravaged the populations of Tahiti,
Hawaii, and others - weakening oral tradition of passing down information.
Also, when europeans first came, they were overall very un-interested in
preserving any oral history, and mostly just colonised and fucked over the
local populations - playing out the classic tropes of colonisation.

~~~
jandrese
European colonialists are definitely a type of disaster.

------
mc32
One lingering question I have for all migrations in antiquity is why (given
very low pop density)?

I’m sure some were for the sake of exploration (maybe wanderlust). But in the
vast Pacific if you wanted tropical abundance you had the Indonesian
archipelago. Why bother to search for low density land like Micronesia, etc?

Did people just overhunt and overfish so they had to move on before
agriculture took hold?

~~~
EdwardDiego
Polynesian culture didn't develop in Indonesia though. And as evidenced by the
history of Indonesia, the various cultures there aren't overly good at living
and let live.

Polynesians had agriculture, but they also had limited natural resources on
account of, well, living on islands, and limited arable land. They developed
extensive trade networks to overcome these resource limitations[0], but their
migrations tended to occur when overpopulation led to warfare.

On the agriculture - fun fact, the staple crop of the Polynesians who settled
New Zealand was kumara - a sweet potato. Sweet potatoes being native to South
America.

[0][https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a21796/ancient-p...](https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/a21796/ancient-
polynesian-trade-routes-extended-for-thousands-of-miles/)

~~~
arcboii92
Bonus fun fact: kumara is a loan word taken from kumar, which was it's native
name in South America.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Oh wow, that is indeed a fun fact, I did not know that!

------
Taniwha
As an addition to the above - New Zealand was the last major place in the
world to be settled by humans, in around 900AD, by Polynesians who had left
Taiwan (according to recent DNA evidence), traveled across the Northern
Pacific, likely reached the Americas (there's some archaeological evidence
though controversial) and back across the Southern Pacific to NZ - they had
maps and could repeat their journeys

~~~
madhadron
From my reading on this subject, the sweet potato is what enabled the settling
of New Zealand. It came from South America, and one of the stable trade routes
in eastern Polynesia did run along South America.

"Pathway of the Birds" is the best reference available today on all this.

------
davidw
> So the idea of going out and back, out and back, out and back, in a radial
> pattern — or something like that — is not so improbable. And if you were a
> person who expects there to be an island, who knows that islands are in
> chains and believes that you will find another island and that there will be
> another island beyond that, then the question is basically, “How long is it
> going to take to find the next one?”

That's the fascinating bit for me. Being an exceptional navigator is one
thing, but finding some of those tiny specks of land in a massive ocean in the
first place is really something incredible.

~~~
EdwardDiego
If you read into traditional Polynesian navigation techniques, they were very
good at inferring the existence and direction of far off land based on birds,
wave patterns etc.

------
markdown
> Well, I have a real soft spot for Captain Cook.

The man who "discovered" all these islands... islands that already had people
on them... and then (according to the botanist on his ship Georg Forster)
engaged in pedophilia, raping the children they found. They often took girls
as young as 9 and 10, rationalising that this was acceptable because
"Polynesian girls were sooner ripe".

> We went for eight weeks all over Polynesia

Wow, eight weeks in six or seven nations, and then writing with such authority
on the subject. Tourists spend more time in one locality than she did.

And the use of "Polynesia" again. There are three groupings in the Pacific.
The greatest sailing vessel of all was the Drua, developed in Fiji by
Melanesians, not Polynesians. It could carry over 200 people.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drua)

~~~
EdwardDiego
> and then (according to the botanist on his ship Georg Forster) engaged in
> pedophilia, raping the children they found

Citation needed for claims Captain Cook raped kids.

> And the use of "Polynesia" again.

Polynesia is a well established area, google Polynesian triangle to learn
more. Yeah, there are three main language and genetic groups in the Pacific -
Micronesian, Melanesian, Polynesian, but the Polynesians are the focus of this
article because they're far more widely dispersed.

> The greatest sailing vessel of all was the Drua, developed in Fiji by
> Melanesians

No doubt. And it was rapidly adopted by the Tongans, Polynesians that had
regular contact with the Fijians. Much how the Polynesians rapidly adopted the
sweet potato of South America. The fact that they built a big ocean going
canoe does nothing to detract from the navigational exploits of the
Polynesians.

~~~
markdown
"South Sea Maidens: Western Fantasy and Sexual Politics in the South Pacific"
\- By Michael Sturma

[https://www.amazon.com/South-Sea-Maidens-Politics-
Contributi...](https://www.amazon.com/South-Sea-Maidens-Politics-
Contributions/dp/0313316740)

IIRC that part is based on the diary of Georg Forster, who was the botanist
aboard Cook's 2nd voyage.

Cook and his savages wreaked havok on the islands they came into contact with.
Abductions, pedophilia and rape, and the diseases they brought decimated the
populations.

~~~
EdwardDiego
Nothing in Forster's diaries about Cook himself indulging yeah?

~~~
markdown
Not as far as I know, but that's not a distinction worth making. It's not a
stretch to assume a man of as few scruples as he had also indulged his base
instincts. And even if he didn't, these men were under his direct command and
supervision, and performed these crimes with his foreknowledge.

Hitler (inb4 Poe's law) didn't personally drag people into gas chambers.

------
danans
> The most logical answer is that they have a tradition of migrating. These
> are people who have been moving for a couple of thousand years. They have
> been migrating from island to island and they keep migrating until they run
> out of places to migrate to.

While their ocean wayfinding skills were doubtless incredible, I have a hard
time believing they migrated for the sake of migration.

Most human migrations away from an existing settlement are motivated by the
tips of the spears of those who hold power in the settlement, ultimately by
population exceeding the resources available.

People still ultimately prefer the relative security of the settlement to the
dangers of the wilds, and usually only venture out into the latter when they
have no other choice.

Obviously this applies less to nomadic groups, but even in that case the group
is really a mobile settlement.

~~~
taneq
The motivation certainly seems to mainly have been finding new places to live:

> While the early Polynesians were skilled navigators, most evidence indicates
> that their primary exploratory motivation was to ease the demands of
> burgeoning populations. Polynesian mythology does not speak of explorers
> bent on conquest of new territories, but rather of heroic discoverers of new
> lands for the benefit of those who voyaged with them.

Source:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_culture#Development...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_culture#Development_in_isolation:_\(c._700_to_1595\))

> People still ultimately prefer the relative security of the settlement to
> the dangers of the wilds, and usually only venture out into the latter when
> they have no other choice.

From what I've seen, the opposite is true, at least for a subset of people who
prefer to travel and explore. These people usually move again after their new
land is fully established. They just like the frontier.

~~~
danans
> From what I've seen, the opposite is true, at least for a subset of people
> who prefer to travel and explore. These people usually move again after
> their new land is fully established. They just like the frontier.

Most of the European migration to the United States was by people who were
either refugees (the first Puritan settlers, Jews fleeing persecution),
starving (Irish and Southern Europan immigrants), or forcefully evicted from
their homes (Scottish peasants after the Highland Clearances [1]).

Even within the US, groups that we think of as pioneering westward, like the
Mormons, were fundamentally fleeing persecution. According to the Latter Day
Saints' history (as explained to me by the tour guide at the Church's HQ in
Salt Lake City's), it was legal in NY state to kill Mormons in the early days
of their community - thus triggering their series of migrations west
ultimately to what we call Utah today.

Others westward American pioneers were landless and destitute as the arable
lands of the eastern seaboard were all held by wealthy estates. Their options
were to stay in near-serfdom or move west.

Among them no doubt were a few who migrated just for the sake of adventure.
But most people were moving just to survive.

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

~~~
cafard
It was "legal" to kill Mormons in the sense that a jury might decline to
convict the killers. They had a pretty brutal time at Nauvoo, Illinois, as
well.

Much the largest part of Scottish emigration to America was from the Lowlands
--there were just a lot more people in the Lowlands than in the Highlands. And
the German emigration mostly wasn't of refugees or the starving.

~~~
danans
> Much the largest part of Scottish emigration to America was from the
> Lowlands--there were just a lot more people in the Lowlands than in the
> Highlands.

The Highlands were much more populated before than after the Clearances. They
were cleared to make space for industrial scale sheep farming. Many of those
evicted Highlanders spent a time in the oversubscribed Lowland cities before
moving on to the American colonies.

> And the German emigration mostly wasn't of refugees or the starving.

> And the German emigration mostly wasn't of refugees or the starving.

I'm not so sure about that.

From [https://www.deutschland.de/en/usa/us-immigration-americas-
ge...](https://www.deutschland.de/en/usa/us-immigration-americas-german-roots)
:

"German emigration to the USA began at the end of the 17th century when
Germany was suffering from the after-effects of the bloody religious conflicts
of the Thirty Years’ War, and Christian minorities were being persecuted. Many
farmers lived in poverty, their very existence threatened by failed harvests
and land shortages, so many decided to leave for a country that appeared to
offer both freedom and prosperity. That country was America."

"The situation in Germany worsened when the start of industrialisation caused
the population to grow dramatically. In the mid-19th century, around three
quarters of farmers did not have enough land to make a living, hence they
began migrating in huge numbers from 1816 – the start of official German mass
emigration to the USA."

------
peter303
They never stopped voyaging. A dwindling number trained navigators are trying
to pass their skills on.

~~~
pat_trick
Indeed; various communities around the Pacific are working on continuing this
tradition.

------
JusticeJuice
The title is a little inaccurate (and dismissive), the mystery isn't about how
Polynesian navigation worked - the mystery has more to do with the DNA origins
of the people of Polynesian.

I really recommend reading the story of Tupia to learn more about how
Polynesian Navigation actually worked. He was a priest and navigator who
joined James Cook's ship and essentially helped him discover many more islands
than they ever would. It also shows how much of a dick James was in the end.

[https://www.amazon.com/Tupaia-Remarkable-Captain-
Polynesian-...](https://www.amazon.com/Tupaia-Remarkable-Captain-Polynesian-
Navigator/dp/1459672097)

------
gdm85
On this topic I suggest "We,the navigators" by David Lewis.

~~~
pat_trick
"Hawaiki Rising" by Sam Low is also an excellent read.

~~~
pvitz
I have just happened to read it. While I find the technical parts of
navigation of Nainoa Thompson and Mau Piailug highly interesting, large parts
of the book are concerned with Hawaiian or Polynesian identity. Would you have
a suggestion for a much more technical oriented book on Polynesian (or
Micronesian) navigation? Thanks!

------
dang
Three related threads from 2019:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19352806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19352806)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19450799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19450799)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20124949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20124949)

Others?

------
madhadron
For those who are interested in this subject, the right book to go read is
"Pathway of the Birds," which is a summary of the research to date. We know a
_lot_ now about this.

------
jgamman
"your earlier book, “Come On Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All” "

yeah, nah.

