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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.
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
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This will probably get buried (and maybe was already mentioned, but…
It’s not just the clouds, but the color on the underside of clouds. Lots of green reflects differently than blue or gray.
Also, I have see the current maps made by the Polynesians, which matches the description of what the Marshallese use. The only difference on the one I saw included sewed on little cowrie shells indicating the position of known islands.
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No they, they used a wide variety of wayfinding techniques that others have mentioned – wave patterns, currents, maps, birds. Also you can tell if there are islands over the horizon based on cloud formations that gather over the land. They were incredibly skilled navigators – the sea was basically the core of their lifestyle.
The ancestors of Polynesians came from what is now Taiwan, apparently. Indigenous Taiwanese, that is, not the Han latecomers who followed Chiang Kai Shek off mainland China.
They went south and some populated SE Asia (becoming Indonesians, Malaysians and Filipinos), and others went on all over the Pacific as Polynesians. Southeast Asians learned ironworking, while Polynesians never found useable metal deposits on the islands and were stone-tech until European contact.
Curiously the Polynesians also had no tradition of pottery. They had gourds but no clay pots.
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