I recall being told that the Polynesians were quite good astronomers - one can at least get latitude that way (the story of how shipboard clocks were developed in order to measure longitude is a fascinating story). Cris On Mar 26, 2015, at 8:30 AM, Henry Baker <hbaker1@pipeline.com> wrote:
The question I was trying to answer was how the Polynesians navigated _routinely_, which is a very different question from how they discovered some islands in the first place.
Interestingly, one of the supposed techniques was to take along some particular kinds of birds. If they wanted to know if there was land nearby, they would release a bird. If it came back (relatively quickly), there wasn't land nearby. I seem to recall that Noah used some sort of bird trick after the Flood to find land.
Obviously, one would have to have a pretty decent supply of such birds on hand when embarking on a long journey to a relatively unknown stretch of the ocean.
The Polynesians therefore reduced the navigation problem to one already solved (by the birds).
At 02:30 PM 3/25/2015, Hilarie Orman wrote:
Polynesians were not unique in having oral traditions that codified their knowledge. They also made maps from sticks, string, and shells.
However, some say the biggest clue to the existence of the Hawaiian Islands was probably the pattern of migrating birds.
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