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----- Original Message -----
From: "George Huxtable"
> I have ended up somewhat sceptical of claims of the superb
ocean-navigating
> skills of the Polynesian peoples (or the other Pacific-island societies).
> But that is entirely on the basis of secondhand learning (and a sceptical
> nature), and my mind is open to being convinced otherwise.

When Cook turned up in Hawaii with a Polynesian from Tahiti he was surprised
that they could communicate, the dialects were not too different. The
Hawaiian story was that their ancestors had come from the Marquesas (? Iles
Marquises), about 2500 nm across open ocean (few or no islands along the
way) and that subsequent to the original migration large double-hulled
sailing canoes traveled between the two places. In modern times a number of
recreations of this and other extended ocean crossings have been made.
The Micronesian connection is important because it was there that
traditional navigators have been found in recent times (long since vanished
from Hawaii) and so these teachers (and their book and thesis writing
students - there have been others, apart from Lewis) found themselves
 undertaking these trips (comparable with an Atlantic crossing, and not
necessarily along the same latitude) through extended unfamiliar waters
 - far from just 'island-hopping'.

> ...  I am quoting from memory and am not certain which book it's
> in ...

So am I, and what I remember is this Micronesian navigator on the other side
of a vast ocean, an area he had never visited, confidently navigating the
way from Hawaii to the Marquesas (or some comparable trip) and explaining
that the methods were applicable everywhere. As we would expect many of them
would be, eg: compasses using the rising and setting of known stars.

> A Polynesian punishment for serious transgressions of their code was
> banishment. The offender would be put into a boat with a woman and a
> pregnant sow, and instructed not to return.

Two advantages of the Polynesian sagas are that they happened in relatively
recent times, and to a people without a written language who guarded
excellent oral traditions. Polynesian migrations have been studied with a
number of tools. One is language, which indicates that the Marquesas were a
sort of originating point for many far-flung colonies. Maps have been
drawn up showing routes of spread and approximate times, based on how the
language has changed yet is similar across the far-flung Polynesian islands.

The Maori (who came from the Society Islands, who came from the Marquesas)
oral tradition is quite detailed, and far from unique. The story of their
ancestors' arrival in New Zealand is complete with the number of boats and
people, their names, animals and plants brought, etc, and their subsequent
 histories up to white settlement (its thanks to this oral history that we
know that they found another people already living in New Zealand when they
arrived). This original migration was across about 2000 nm, again open ocean
- at least that is how they say it was done. All of this happened since the
Vikings were raiding the coasts of Europe. I'm not sure how typical was
'a woman and a pregnant sow' as a successful migration model.

Of course the Polynesians had to get to the Marquesas in the first place, a
group of islands thousands of miles from any land in most directions, but
that's another story.

   

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