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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
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They didn’t have magnetic compass so they used stars or bright planets such as Venus and Jupiter to navigate during the night. During day time they use the sun to navigate.
When near an island there would be birds and cloud formation. The Māori name for New Zealand is Aotearoa with one literal translation as ‘the land of the long white cloud’ given by them when they discovered the North Island.
The Māori voyagers also used whales to find land in this case it was the Humpback whale. They believed that by following whales they would be led to land as whales give birth in calmer water near atolls or islands. Whales travel slowly at around 3 to 5 knots thus making them easy to follow.
This is the [source](https://teara.govt.nz/en/canoe-navigation/page-3) about finding land.
[Here](https://teara.govt.nz/en/maori-origins-and-arrivals) are the different stories about the Māori origins and arrival.
For Hawaii, which is one of the more remote groups of islands, two possibilities come to mind:
Pumice. Hawaii is volcanic, and while most eruptions are the familiar rivers of lava [there are exceptions](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keanakakoi_eruption). The maps I see online show a current flowing westwards from Hawaii, so if the Polynesians encountered relatively fresh pumice coming from the east they would suspect there might be land there.
Those same currents would carry rafts of terrestrial vegetation torn loose by heavy rains, which would be an even stronger indication of land to the east.
Hi Everyone,
This post is popular and that is wonderful. I want to encourage everyone joining us from r/all (and everyone else) to please take a look through the rules before participating, we are unfortunately a bit of a strict sub.
In particular rule 3: Top level comments must be written explanations. There are excellent books, articles, and documentaries on this topic, it is *not* a sufficient answer to just tell OP to go check one of those out. You can include a suggestion to do so with an original explanation of the topic in the title, but the meat of your explanation needs to be your own.
Please let me know if you have any questions and otherwise enjoy.
I asked this same question in an anthropology class @ University of Hawaii.
prof: well, how have humans usually found new places?
me: by just… exploring? you can’t blindly wander the ocean tho, it’s too dangerous
prof: and exploring the land isn’t? i think the issue is you look at the ocean as an obstacle, whereas polynesians do not. in their eyes, the ocean is a highway
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