Why Did The Polynesians Stop Sailing?

The Polynesians, an ancient forerunner of the modern catamaran, were a group of people who sailed across the Pacific Ocean to reach mainland South America. However, their explorations stalled for two millennia due to the wind and the belief that European explorers were sceptical of their seafaring skills. This belief was rooted in the Western narrative’s deep sense of technological superiority.

The Polynesians were skilled sailors who used matting sails and long steering paddles to navigate through the seas. The navigation renaissance began in the early 1970s, with Hawaiians sailing to prove the claim that Polynesia was settled. As islands became overpopulated, navigators were sent out to sail uncharted seas to find undiscovered islands. They lived aboard wooden boats for weeks, and around the end of the first millennium CE, Polynesians sailed east into French Polynesia before migrating to the Marquesas and Hawaii.

The Polynesians perfected non-instrumental deep-sea navigation more than 3,000 years ago, well before early European explorers reached the Pacific with compasses and sextants. New evidence has been found for epic prehistoric voyages between the Americas and eastern Polynesia, and DNA analysis suggests mixing between Native Americans.

The Long Pause may have been influenced by El Nino winds and ocean disasters, but further research is needed to determine why traditional Polynesian voyaging stopped for nearly 1000 years. The main motivation for Polynesian migration was overpopulation, as their island homes had a finite ability to support their population.

Archaeological evidence indicates that Polynesians sailed eastward to the Cook, Society, and Marquesas Groups, crossing thousands of kilometers of the open Pacific Ocean. The lead character, Moana, cannot sail beyond the reef due to the dangerous and rough waters, and her father, Chief Tui, forbids her from sailing beyond it.

Why did the ancient Polynesians stop sailing?

From about AD 950 to AD 1250, the ‘world’ enjoyed a period of global warming. Natural global warming. After that, however, the world began to get colder and colder… and colder. This was natural global cooling. This phenomenon began around AD1300 and lasted in varying degrees all the way up to 1850. Nobody knows exactly what caused it. Some cite changes in ocean circulation or a decrease in human population. I think it’s cycles – after all the earth is a living thing.

You see, whatever the cause, temperatures, winds and ocean currents changed and thus ended the grand Polynesian explorations. I guess many could have been lost at sea or stranded halfway to a destination or even ended up elsewhere. They might have been great navigators – but not when the ocean currents and winds changed. During this warm period Polynesians spread everywhere and voyages from and to South America and NW America occurred as well. But it all stopped around 1300AD, only 20 years after the so called fleet arrivals came to NZ……..and surface currents do exist from Melanesia to NZ.

We have always maintained Melanesians were in NZ first based on a number of factors, including early photographic anthropological evidence and large numbers of artifactual proof. But this would have been earlier than 800AD and in fact, that time period prior to 800AD may have had entirely different winds currents and temperatures as well. Currents from Melanesia may have varied over millennia. The Moriori got to the Chathams but it would be very difficult to get back west, impossible in reality once their canoes were too old – as the islands had little in the way of decent timber with with to build one.

Of course when people talk of what is possible and what is not, you can sail against ocean currents in any form of functioning masted craft. However, getting from Melanesia to NZ is not that hard, but getting back is very difficult. Yes, they were here in small groupings, mainly in the sounds of Cook Strait and on the west of the North Island. I suggest some of Maori descent do a DNA test like one of our followers did. He’s very tall, and has an artifact that is huge just like we know of. If Maori do this test, many will find more Melanesian DNA than they suppose. Do it especially of you have a photo of an old relative with a flatter and wider nose than normal.

Why did the Polynesians stop migrating?

By the time Europeans arrived in Hawai‘i in the 18th century, voyaging between Hawai‘i and the rest of Polynesia had ceased for more than 400 years, perhaps the last voyager being Pa‘ao or Mo‘ikeha in the 14th century. The reason for the cessation of voyaging is not known. However, after the 14th century, the archaeological evidence reveals a dramatic expansion of population and food production in Hawai‘i (Kirch 303-306). Perhaps the resources and energies of the Hawaiian people went into developing their ‘aina; and ties with families and gods on the islands to the south weakened.

As Ben Finney suggests in “One Species, or a Million?” (From Sea to Space), the history of humanity is a history of migrations. Human beings originated in Africa perhaps 200,000 years ago, spread through Europe and Asia, walked across a once-existant land bridge (or paddled along the coastline) to the Americas, then traversed short sea distances to the once-unified land mass of New Guinea-Australia. The human movement into Polynesia was the final phase of the human settlement of the globe, into the most isolated, most difficult to reach habitable land. The particular genius and contribution of the Polynesians was the development of seafaring and navigation skills and canoe technology that enabled them to voyage back and forth across the long sea distances among islands of the Pacific. The motivation for the exploration was probably universal: the search for new lands for settlement and new resources for survival.

Human beings have been one of the most successful species on earth, adapting technology and culture for survival in new environments. Human population has flourished in many different places and times. The Polynesians, with their expertise in fishing and farming, were able to develop healthy, stable communities on islands with limited resources. Resource management and conservation were essential on such islands, since overexploitation could result in damage to or permanent loss of resources. Malama ‘aina, caring for the land, was a key value for survival. At their best, Polynesian societies found a balance between human needs and limited resources. Extended families, or ‘ohana, worked the land and sea; those near the coast supplied the products of the sea to those living inland, who in turn supplied land products. The division of labor and sharing is embodied in the tradition of two brothers and their wives – Ku‘ula-uka, a farmer of the uplands, and his wife Hina-ulu-‘ohia, a goddesss of the forest; and Ku‘ula-kai, a fisherman, and his wife Hina-puku-i‘a, who gathered products of the reef and seashore. As part of an ‘ohana, everyone worked together and received a share of the produce. Stinginess and hoarding was criticized, as was laziness, sponging, and gluttony. Hospitality to malihini (persons from outside of the community) was also a strong tradition.

Do Polynesians still sail?

Ancient Polynesians settled the Pacific islands through the sacred art of wayfinding. Today, navigators sail thousands of miles, without instruments, to preserve the tradition.

Wayfinders see constellations as navigational guardrails.

Time stood still as Hōkūle‘a’s scarlet sails pierced the Pacific horizon, painting an ancient scene long absent from Tahiti’s shores. It was 4 June 1976 and Hōkūle‘a, a traditional Polynesian double-hulled sailing canoe, neared Tahiti’s Pape’ete harbour after 33 days at sea. Elders wept on the beach, absorbed by the moment’s enormity. Children scaled trees to snag views of the history that would soon unfold.

What caused the Polynesian long pause?

In the chronology of the exploration and first populating of Polynesia, there is a gap commonly referred to as the long pause between the first populating of Fiji (Melanesia), Western Polynesia of Tonga and Samoa among others and the settlement of the rest of the region. In general this gap is considered to have lasted roughly 1,000 years. The cause of this gap in voyaging is contentious among archaeologists with a number of competing theories presented including climate shifts, the need for the development of new voyaging techniques, and cultural shifts.

After the long pause, dispersion of populations into central and eastern Polynesia began. Although the exact timing of when each island group was settled is debated, it is widely accepted that the island groups in the geographic center of the region (i.e. the Cook Islands, Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, etc.) were settled initially between 1000 and 1150 AD, and ending with more far flung island groups such as Hawaii, New Zealand, and Easter Island settled between 1200 and 1300 AD.

Tiny populations may have been involved in the initial settlement of individual islands; although Professor Matisoo-Smith of the Otago study said that the founding Māori population of New Zealand must have been in the hundreds, much larger than previously thought. The Polynesian population experienced a founder effect and genetic drift. The Polynesian may be distinctively different both genotypically and phenotypically from the parent population from which it is derived. This is due to new population being established by a very small number of individuals from a larger population which also causes a loss of genetic variation.

Atholl Anderson wrote that analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA, female) and Y chromosome (male) concluded that the ancestors of Polynesian women were Austronesians while those of Polynesian men were Papuans. Subsequently, it was found that 96% (or 93.8%) of Polynesian mtDNA has an Asian origin, as does one-third of Polynesian Y chromosomes; the remaining two-thirds from New Guinea and nearby islands; this is consistent with matrilocal residence patterns. Polynesians existed from the intermixing of few ancient Austronesian-Melanesian founders, genetically they belong almost entirely to the Haplogroup B (mtDNA), which is the marker of Austronesian expansions. The high frequencies of mtDNA Haplogroup B in the Polynesians are the result of founder effect and represents the descendants of a few Austronesian females who intermixed with Papuan males.

Is Moana historically accurate?

The plot of Disney’s Moana. Disney’s Moana has depicted part of Polynesian history in its own way, with some aspects being somewhat factual while others were exaggerated.

Disney’s Moana is set on the fictional island of Motunui. She is selected to sail and return the heart of Te Fiti, an island goddess, after it is stolen by the demigod Maui to give mankind the power of creation. Te Feti’s heart is symbolized in a pounamu stone amulet which is lost to the depths. After Te Feti’s heart is stolen, she becomes the lava demon Te Ka and curses Motunui a millennium later, resulting in a blight.

At the time of the blight, Moana’s people had stopped traveling a long time ago and were protecting themselves using a reef. Moana heads out to sea despite her father’s warnings to never cross the protective reef. Moana struggles to learn sailing and getting past her home reef. This is foreshadowing to her learning the path of wayfinding.

Once Moana proves success in her travels, her people begin traveling once again. This essentially is Disney’s interpretation of the end of the Long Pause, although of course it differs significantly from the real scientific reason.

Why are Polynesians so big?

Houghton hypothesized that the heavy body-build of the Polynesians was the result of adaptation to cold conditions. Although most of the Polynesian islands are within the tropical region of the Pacific Ocean, the climate is windy and the sensory temperature is low.

Big feet in Polynesia: a somatometric study of the Tongans.

Keywords: Tonga, Polynesians, foot measurements, hand measurements.

View “Advance Publication” version (January 28, 2006).

How did Polynesians get fresh water?

For several centuries, Polynesian people who settled in Hawaii used freshwater springs along the coastline for their needs and even dove off canoes to gather fresh water from plumes emerging from the seafloor. Photos dating back to the 19th century show horses drinking fresh water from the sea above nearshore discharges. Hence, the Hawaiian community has extensive accumulated knowledge about the islands’ aquifers and submarine groundwater discharge points along their coastlines.

However, because of the complex geology of Hawaii, the interconnectivity and spatial distribution of groundwater sources are not fully understood. For this reason, in 2016, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) funded a project called ʻIke Wai, the Hawaiian words for “knowledge” and “water.” The mission of the ʻIke Wai project, which lasts through this coming May, has been to ensure Hawaii’s future water security through multidisciplinary research in microbiology, geochemistry, economics, climatology, hydrology, land use, and marine geophysics. The project has focused on two major aquifers: the Pearl Harbor aquifer on Oahu and the Hualalai aquifer on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Conventional hydrogeologic models for Hawaii’s onshore aquifers are based on the foundational work of Stearns and Macdonald. Their models assumed that the basal freshwater lens, a convex-shaped layer of fresh groundwater, becomes thinner nearer the coastline, where fresh water discharges to the ocean through coastal springs and shallow submarine vents. The freshwater lens is maintained by precipitation that filters through layers of soil and migrates downward until it reaches the water-saturated subsurface. This type of groundwater layer often occurs on small islands and floats above a denser, salty groundwater layer.

Could the Polynesians have reached America?

Polynesian voyagers sailed without a compass or any other nautical instruments. Yet by reading the stars, waves, currents, clouds, seaweed clumps and seabird flights, they managed to cross vast swaths of the Pacific Ocean and settle hundreds of islands, from Hawaii in the north to Easter Island in the southeast to New Zealand in the southwest. Evidence has mounted that they likewise reached mainland South America—and possibly North America as well—long before Christopher Columbus.

“It’s one of the most remarkable colonization events of any time in history,” says Jennifer Kahn, an archeologist at the College of William & Mary, who specializes in Polynesia. “We’re talking about incredibly skilled navigators (discovering) some of the most remote places in the world.”

Tracing Polynesian Ancestry. Based on linguistic, genetic and archeological data, scientists believe that the ancestors of the Polynesians originated in Taiwan (and perhaps the nearby south China coast). From there, they purportedly traveled south into the Philippines and further on to New Guinea and the Bismarck Archipelago, where they mixed with the local populace. By around 1300 B.C., a new culture had developed, the Lapita, known in part for their distinct pottery.

These direct descendants of the Polynesians rapidly swept eastward, first to the Solomon Islands and then to uninhabited Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Fiji, and elsewhere. “The Lapita were the first ones to get into remote Oceania,” says Patrick V. Kirch, an anthropology professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa, and author of On the Road of the Winds: An Archeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact. “It was really a blank slate as far as humans were concerned.”

How did Polynesians get so big?

Recent studies based on a variety of approaches suggest that modern Polynesians derive from small-sized ancestral populations that were characterized by a large and heavy body-build, such characteristics probably having been acquired through selection associated with natural disasters.

Big feet in Polynesia: a somatometric study of the Tongans.

Keywords: Tonga, Polynesians, foot measurements, hand measurements.

View “Advance Publication” version (January 28, 2006).

How did Polynesians survive long voyages?

A hearth lined with stone, coral and sand and fueled by coconut husk and shell enabled the voyagers to cook at sea. Water was carried in gourds and sections of bamboo and stored along with drinking coconuts wherever space or ballast needs dictated. If a canoe encountered or could seek out a rain squall, water supplies could be supplemented by collecting water as it ran off the sail; if water was critically short people could temporarily subsist on the moisture found in the flesh of freshly caught fish, turtles, sharks and other marine organisms. Salt water could not effectively be used to stretch a dwindling water supply; it only hastens the dehydration process. Water rationing was undoubtedly practiced.

Floating zoos, Polynesian voyaging canoes carried pigs, chickens and dogs which were intended as breeding stock for a new settlement, though they could also be eaten if stores dipped perilously low. Rats were sometimes uninvited passengers and may have occasionally provided an emergency meal.

Experience had taught the Polynesian that very few edible plants grew on previously uninhabited islands, so with him he took a traveling garden. To Hawaiçi he brought about two dozen varieties of plants, though probably not all at the same time. Slips, cuttings, tubers and young plants were first swathed in fresh water-moistened moss, then swaddled in dry ti-leaf, kapa (bark cloth), or skin from the banana tree. Finally, these bundles were put in lauhala (pandanus leaf) casings and hung from the roof of the canoe’s hut. Here they would best be protected from lethal salt water and salt spray. In a few cases, he took seeds.

Could Polynesians sail upwind?

CANOE HULL SAILING PERFORMANCE. Polynesian canoes were long and narrow because they were made from logs and planks and their ability to sail upwind was affected by their underwater hull shape. We compared three 12 m hulls with different underwater cross-sections shown in Figure6 (U-shape, V1 and V2). U-shaped hulls represent the basic shape of a hollowed-out tree trunk and are presumed to be an ancient shape that remained common in ethnographic times. However, some of the voyaging canoes recorded in Polynesia during the Cook voyages, including a Tahitian pahi and a Tongan tongiaki, were of V1 shape (Haddon & Hornell, 1997). Sophisticated V2 hulls developed in the atoll archipelagos of eastern Micronesia where long-term settlement depended on expert maritime communication. The three full-size hulls were analysed by computational fluid dynamics, CFD, by Boeck etal., and 1/10th scale models were tested in a towing tank at Newcastle University by Flay etal..

The results of CFD and towing tank tests were in close agreement (Flay etal., 2019). Measurements were made at angles of attack of 0°, 5°, 10° and 15° representing leeway angles while sailing against and across the wind. It was found that canoes with V-shaped hulls sail better upwind because they generate more hydrodynamic side force (Figure7). Only three hull shapes were tested so we cannot be precise about the performance of intermediate shapes but they follow the general trend.

Archaeological canoes. Results of the hull tests can be applied to archaeological remains. Several planks from a large canoe, similar to those of historic ones, were found at an early wetland site at Fa’ahia, Huahine, Society group, plus a steering oar (Sinoto, 1979), but whether they date to the lowest level or later is uncertain (Anderson etal., 2019). In New Zealand the remains of many Māori waka (canoes) have been found in more than a dozen wetland sites (Irwin etal., 2017; Johns etal., 2017). The Anaweka plank is from the earliest-known canoe in Polynesia and dates from the late fourteenth century AD. It has a sophisticated and complex structure unlike any ethnographic Māori canoe (Figure8) and is more like the planked canoes of central East Polynesia recorded by the first Europeans than the contemporary dugouts in New Zealand. The plank is complete and measures 6.08 m long and 85 cm wide at the widest point. It comes from one side of a large canoe and there are lashing holes along the top edge for the attachment of a gunwale or decking, and holes on the bottom edge for attachment to a dugout under body. The plank is curved in transverse section and reinforced by four ribs, and it also curves lengthwise towards the end of the hull. A carved sea turtle on the side of the plank must have faced forwards as it travelled through the water, showing it was from near the back of the canoe, not the front.

Were Polynesians good sailors?

INTRODUCTION. It has been known for some time that the ancient Polynesians were superb navigators able to find their way over long distances at sea using their intimate knowledge of the sky, the ocean and its wildlife, the weather and the seasons.

INTRODUCTION. It has been known for some time that the ancient Polynesians were superb navigators able to find their way over long distances at sea using their intimate knowledge of the sky, the ocean and its wildlife, the weather and the seasons. Their remarkable knowledge of the vast seascapes of Polynesia was exemplified by the chart drawn by the Ra’iatean navigator Tupaia for Cook when they sailed together in 1769 on the Endeavour. The unique collaboration of these famous individuals was, in a sense, repeated 200 years later during voyages by the Polynesian canoe Hōkūle’a, when the Micronesian expert navigator Mau Piailug tutored sailors and scholars including Nainoa Thompson, Ben Finney and David Lewis in the arts of indigenous navigation (Finney, 1994).

A vital question that remains is to determine how well ancient canoes could sail. A conventional view is that they were weatherly – able to sail at 75° to the true wind angle (TWA) and capable of sailing at moderate speeds in suitable weather (Finney, 2008; Irwin, 1992; Irwin & Flay, 2015). However, in 2000 and subsequently Atholl Anderson has argued that their sailing capability has been exaggerated (Anderson, 2000, 2001, 2008, 2017). Two important questions are at issue: could the canoes really sail against the wind, and could they make moderately fast passages at sea? If they could, then voyages of exploration and planned migrations to known destinations could follow. If they could not, then migration would have more often been one-way with higher loss of life, needing assistance from anomalous winds such as El Niño (Anderson etal., 2006) and shifts in patterns of prevailing winds (Goodwin etal., 2014).

The discovery in recent decades of the archaeological remains of as many as 20 pre-European canoes in New Zealand has been an important breakthrough (Irwin etal., 2017; Johns etal., 2017), and a complete section of a complex and robust composite canoe found at Anaweka on the northwest coast of the South Island gives us the first solid clue as to what early East Polynesian voyaging canoes looked like (Johns etal., 2014). By AD 1400 this large canoe had already been used, repaired, and sailed along the open sea coast, not many generations after the first settlement of New Zealand by numerous named canoes of the Māori migration (Jacomb etal., 2014). The Anaweka waka was unlike any historically-known Māori canoe and it had a carved sea turtle at the waterline that evokes the rich cultural symbolism of tropical Polynesia.