Polynesian Seafaring

Around 1500 B.C., voyagers from the islands along the north shore of New Guinea began moving east along the Solomon Island chain, and then to the Banks and Vanuatu Archipelagos. As the gaps between islands grew from tens of miles at the edge of the western Pacific to hundreds of miles along the way to Polynesia, and then to thousands of miles in the case of voyages to the far corners of the Polynesian triangle, these oceanic colonizers developed great double-hulled canoes.

The two hulls gave this craft stability and the capacity to carry heavy loads of migrating families, their food supplies, livestock, and planting materials, while a central platform laid over the crossbeams provided the needed working, living, and storage space. Sails made of matting drove it swiftly through the seas, and long steering paddles enabled Polynesian mariners to keep it sailing on course.

As the voyages became longer, they developed a highly sophisticated navigation system based on observations of the stars, the ocean swells, the flight patterns of birds and other natural signs to find their way over the open ocean. And, as they moved farther away from the biotic centers of Southeast Asia and New Guinea, finding the flora and fauna increasingly diminished, they developed a portable agricultural system, whereby the domesticated plants and animals were carried in their canoes for transplantation on the islands they found.

Once they had reached the mid-ocean archipelagos of Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, these seafarers were alone in the ocean, for only they had the canoes and navigational skills needed to push so far into the Pacific. The gaps between islands widen greatly in the eastern Pacific and the prevailing winds become less and less favorable for sailing to the east. Nonetheless, the archaeological evidence indicates that they sailed eastward to the Cook, Society, and Marquesas Groups, and from there crossed thousands of miles of open ocean to colonize the islands of Hawai’i in the north, Easter Island in the southeast, and New Zealand in the southwest.