Polynesia: The Ancient Knowledge of “Wayfinding”

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Polynesia: travelling the open Pacific Ocean

Imagine, for a moment, that you stand on a beach at night. It is too dark to see very far in front of you or around you. Overhead, the stars blanket the sky, rich and shining and layered. There are far too many to count. They are not in the familiar shapes and designs that you would see in the Northern Hemisphere. These are altogether different, because you are standing on a beach in an island deep in the Pacific Ocean.

You can hear breaking waves as they come onto the beach, in a steady and mesmerizing rhythm. And everywhere, in the air, is a tantalizing aroma of sweet fruit. The night air is warm, almost heavy, and the perfumed scent provides a feeling of mystery, of something waiting to be discovered deeper into the night.

It is these stars, this ocean, that provided the means for a migration of ocean-going peoples thousands of years ago. It brought them across the vast waters of the Pacific Ocean to settle across far-flung tropical islands now known as Polynesia. The stars were the map, and the ocean the road.

In this EarthWise post, we will trace the navigational knowledge that enabled this journey over the ocean. Along the way in future posts we will also delve into the origin stories of the Polynesian peoples that are linked to their coming to call these different islands “home.”

A navagational system known as “wayfinding”

The ancient methods used by the early Polynesians to travel across the vast expanses of the Pacific Ocean are known as “wayfinding.” This is a system that integrated a variety of means to plot and check location, including not only the daytime location of the sun, but night-time stars and ocean swells.

The sky as map

We are used to, in the Northern Hemisphere, of the idea of the sky as a calendar. The change of seasons could be marked by the length of day and length of dark. There is speculation that the massive stone monuments such as Stonehenge and Avebury were built at least in part to serve as markers for the winter and summer solstice. Other theories include that these were also lunar markers— again as a sort of calendar built into the landscape.

But for the ocean-going peoples who travelled to what became known in the modern day as Polynesia, the sky was a map, and not a calendar. The night sky and the stellar constellations became a sure guide of place and movement.

An intricate understanding of the rotation of the stars and their position at different times of year and in different parts of the ocean was a fundamental part of the wayfinding systems.

The rhythm of the ocean

It was not only a detailed knowledge of the night time sky and stars that made up part of the wayfinding system. Another part of the Wayfinder’s knowledge was reading location from ocean swells.

As Ong explains in this BBC Feature: “Another cue is ocean swells – waves formed by permanent weather systems, such as trade winds, that can travel hundreds of miles. Subtle changes in their refraction patterns can indicate an island and its location. But learning to “read” such swells is one of the hardest skills to master – navigators often speak of lying down on their canoes to feel, rather than see, such waves.”

This ability to read the ocean swells to determine geographical positioning by feeling them, rather than observing them, is a skill and knowledge set that speaks to an intimate and intricate knowledge of the ocean.

The knowledge of Wayfinding through these means of tracking stars and feeling the ocean currents took years to learn and master. As commented upon in the Night Sky Tourist blog post on Ancient Wayfinding: Polynesian Night Sky Heritage: “It could take decades before a person knew enough about the signs given by nature to be able to navigate a boat, so they started young. The techniques and knowledge were passed down by oral tradition, often in the form of song.”

Yet, Wayfinding almost became lost knowledge–lost as so many other parts of oral tradition and history have been lost to time. Remarkably, however, this ancient knowledge survived and has been revived in a most extraordinary way.

Reviving the lore of Wayfinding

It can be considered perhaps almost a miracle that the complex knowledge system of Wayfinding managed to survive into the mid-20th century. This was an intricate knowledge system, passed down from one generation to the next. Yet, in a mechanized age, the idea of charting a course to anywhere, let alone the vast reaches of the open Pacific Ocean, based on the knowledge components of Wayfinding, seems like the stuff of fiction.

The journey of the Hōkūle‘a

It is 50 years since the “Hōkūleʻa, Hawaiʻi’s legendary voyaging canoe,” made an epic journey, from “Hawaiʻi to Tahiti voyage completed with exclusively traditional navigation techniques.”

By the time of the launch of the Hōkūle‘a, Wayfinding knowledge had nearly been lost altogether. As this article in Wikipedia explains, “In 1975, no living Hawaiian knew the ancient techniques for blue water voyaging. To enable the voyage, the Polynesian Voyaging Society recruited the Satawalese Master Navigator Mau Piailug …. to share his knowledge of non-instrument navigation.”

There have been further steps taken to revive and preserve the ancient knowledge of Polynesian Wayfinding. The Polynesian Voyaging Society led the way through the efforts of one of its members: “In 1980, member Nainoa Thompson invented a new method of non-instrument navigation, re-engineering the art of wayfinding through academics. Modern Hawaiian wayfinding is now a hybrid that is grounded in science. Although it is still a non-instrument technique, it includes more calculated planning and precision.”

While some purists may find this reinvention of a Wayfinding method objectionable, it is perhaps worth remembering that intangible heritage is not fixed and static. It is always being reinvented and recreated to take on relevance and meaning in new contexts and times. If it cannot do that, it is lost. This new idea of Wayfinding does not detract from the traditional knowledge, rather it enriches it, and points out the mutable nature of knowledge that is to survive.

The lessons from Wayfinding

This blog post only hints at the complexity of stories that there are to tell and learn from the knowledge system of Wayfinding. The complex knowledge system hints at the way other knowledge systems in oral traditions could have been constructed and transmitted. Staring at the ghostlike remains of knowledge that are hinted at in places like Stonehenge and Avebury can only give a small glimpse into what the knowledge systems contained. There is much that has been forgotten that may never be retrieved.

This makes the revival and reinvention of Wayfinding all the more unique. This is truly an inspiring story of past, present and future on the complexities of being EarthWise.