When European explorers first entered the Pacific, they found that the great ocean had already been mastered by navigators whose nautical skills rivaled their own: the Polynesians. The presence of the Polynesians throughout the ocean's constellation of volcanic isles was testimony to an extraordinary seafaring heritage. Starting from islands near Southeast Asia around 2500 B. C.. their ancestors had island-hopped into the Pacificuntil they reached theTonga and Samoa groups about a millennium later. There they perfected an ocean-oriented culture that lent itself to prodigious feats of migration.
When driven from an island by overpopulation, famine or defeat in battle. Polynesians would set off to colonize new lands—sometimes sending exploring parties ahead, sometimes simply trusting fate and their own arcane abilities to lead them to another home (they were not always rewarded; many expeditions perished at sea). Such long voyages were planned months in advance. Even islanders forced into exile by conquering neighbors were given time to build massive double-hulled canoes that could carry scores of people on journeys of eight weeks or more.
Building a voyaging canoe was a community project, supervised by a master craftsman of near-priestly status. Workers shaped large tree trunks into rough hulls and then, with primitive tools of stone, shell and bone, constructed a sturdy sailing vessel that could cover 150 miles in a day.
The canoes were guided to their destinations by an elite fraternity of navigators, taught from childhood to read nautical information in a host of natural phenomena. They knew the vear-round positions of more than 150 stars and had a vast knowledge of ocean currents, prevailing winds and the habits of migratory birds. When nearing islands beyond the horizon, they could actually smell land, feel echoes in the water from swells bouncing off atolls and see the greenish reflection of forests on the underside of clouds.
Following such clues, the Polynesians crossed 15 million square miles of unknown ocean, and by the Eighth Century they had colonized virtually every habitable speck in a vast triangle bound by Hawaii on the north. New Zealand in the southwest and Easter Island to the east.
The canoe's (ivin hu/Js, their sides sealed with a protective varnish mode/rom nut oils, ore Joshed to the crossbeams (hot hold them parallel and support the plank deck. A voyaging canoe might be up to 100 feet long and—with its decic, thatched decJchouse, masts and rigging in place—might weigh 10 tons.
To moke coconut-fiber rope, called sennit, on old man (left) strips fiber that will be soaJced in seo water for eight weeJcs. A worker (background) pounds soaked fiber to soften it, and his partner (second from left) braids the pounded moterioJ into rope. Meanwhile, Polynesian women split pondonus Jeoves into slim strips for woven mots to be sewed into the sails.
World History
