In the field of archaeoastronomy, the indigenous peoples of the Pacific islands are a curiosity – they evidently had an understanding of the stars, key dates throughout the year were marked by the appearance of different stars and constellations, and they were able to navigate vast distances even during the night...and yet only a single culture of the Pacific islands ever developed a written language, and that was upon Easter Island, far to the east and many thousands of miles from the origin of the Polynesian peoples.
Given the evidence that the Polynesians regularly travelled across the Pacific, how did the navigators manage to reliably travel to disparate locations without star maps or written directions? The answer, of course, is in a lifelong training and the memorisation of oral records. For the navigators, it was less essential to know the precise location of stars relative to each other so much as the location a star should be at a given location and a given time. For instance, the stars of Arcturus, Spica and Sirius are perceived to sit directly above Hawaii, Samoa and Tahiti respectively, while Polaris disappears beneath the horizon when you cross the equator.
Further, the navigators of Polynesia did not rely solely upon the stars. Migratory paths, prevailing winds and tides all played their part – it was not a system of navigation dominated by the stars, but an holistic approach that accepted the roles of many factors in establishing routes. As David Lewis, author of We, the Navigators: The Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, once wrote, they “were not merely in tune with their environment...they were literally a part of it.”
The Polynesians are unique in this regard – no other culture (or, more accurately, group of related cultures) lacking a written language ever crossed such vast distances by sea.
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