EDIT: Please stop giving this post awards. There’s no reason to give money to reddit because you like my post. If you really feel compelled to spend money, donate the price of the award to charity or something.
In: Other
[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
[removed]
I believe in New Zealand’s case, it was likely to be the birds. Migrating birds flew over a land mass yearly (forget which), and someone noticed them flying in our direction and figured out there had to be a more land down there.
what I was told on Tonga, was that in addition to things mentioned already like birds and waves bouncing off land. Such as, feeling turbulence, or a “wake” thrown off by islands as the ocean currents cut around them. you sail into that, feel it, and follow it to land. Then another thing was, apparently, there are relatively consistent swells that come from the same direction, we don’t notice them because of all the surface waves, but the skilled navigators could pick them up and use them as a reference, I think also they might get disturbed or blocked by a land mass, not so sure about that last bit, or any of it, I went to Tonga once and it was badass
There’s a lot of good information here, but I haven’t seen anyone directly answer the original question. The navigation methods people are discussing are all correct, but to answer, yes, they did pick a direction and just sail off.
When they were heading to a familiar location, they would sail north or south to the precise latitude, then head east or west. There’s no way to measure longitude without a precise chronometer, which wasn’t developed until pretty late in history by the Europeans. However, they could estimate with a sufficient accuracy. Their latitude measurements were incredibly precise. Over the course of hundreds of miles, they could come within a few miles of the exact spot they wanted by the use of a type of [astrolabe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrolabe) literally made from a coconut shell.
If, instead, they were exploring in search of new lands, they would choose a compass heading and go off for 10 days. If they didn’t find any evidence of land, using the methods others have already described as well as some additional ones, like types of fish encountered, they would reverse course.
This brings up a very interesting historical mystery. Hawai’i is much farther away from the rest of Polynesia than the other island groups. It was settled from the Marquesas Islands, which are 20 days sail away. The voyagers would carry 24 days worth of supplies on exploration missions: 10 out, 10 back, 4 days reserve for storms and such. How did they discover an island chain twice as far away as they normally explored?
The conventional explanation for decades was that they simply got lost, a ridiculous theory as soon as you learn anything about Polynesian wayfinding. [Thor Heyerdal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_Heyerdahl) proposed that ancient people could have crossed the Pacific and even proved it with in a ship made from traditional materials. He got the direction wrong, going east to west, but he at least laid the groundwork for believability.
Polynesians have insisted for all the time they have been in contact with others that their ancestors settled the Pacific deliberately. In 1973 the [Polynesian Voyaging Society](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_Voyaging_Society) was founded to prove that the oral history was accurate. The [Hōkūleʻa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dk%C5%ABle%CA%BBa) was built as a replica of traditional Polynesian ships for that purpose. In 1976, she completed a journey to Tahiti using only traditional Polynesian Voyaging techniques. She has completed several other journeys since then. A sister ship, the Hikianalia was built along the same design, but using only traditional materials. This ship is equally capable of voyaging, but isn’t used as much because of the vastly increased maintenance needed. Both ships completed a three-year circumnavigation of the entire globe on a goodwill mission, visiting indigenous communities around the world. There’s no evidence that the Polynesians ever left the Pacific, but we know know they could have if they wanted to.
So, back to the mystery of Hawai’i’s discovery. The oral history says that a legendary navigator named Hawai’i Loa was given a vision from God to sail on a certain heading in order to find paradise. He set out on a trip that would be one-way if he didn’t find his destination. There are many ways to rationalize the discovery with reasonable explanations, but if you ask nearly any Hawaiian, they will insist the story is true. The one thing we know know for sure is that the Polynesians were fully capable of settling the Pacific using the technology they had at the time.
Surprised none of the top comments mentioned this, but they didnt just pay attention to birds migrating to orient themselves, they also actually caged and brought some sea birds with them. They were periodically released so they could get their bearing. Source: saw it on the new cosmos with ol’ Niel Degrasse Tyson
[removed]
[removed]
Latest Answers