I would also like to add Tattooing into awesome video, we Samoans have traditional tattoos that the woman get that are actually hand compasses. This is used to measure angles and determine the position of celestial bodies in relation to their position. By aligning a reference point, such as a star, with the thumb or another part of the hand, they were able to estimate the angle between the horizon and the celestial body. This angle, combined with knowledge of the time of day or night helped determine their approximate position and direction.
I was at Magic Island near Ala Moana the day the Hōkūleʻa completed its worldwide voyage in 2017. I never got to navigate a canoe, but I took celestial navigation at University of Hawaii in '19. My celestial navigation teacher worked with the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and navigated the Makaliʻi to Tahiti from Hawaiʻi using traditional methods. I'm surprised at how much you got right. But I disagree that Oceanians always found these islands on *accident*, as even your evidence proves they were able to knowingly navigate their way to otherwise uninhabited islands. I'd also like to point out that Polynesians used lapita pottery, notably in Tonga and Sāmoa. Why they stopped is up for speculation, but wood bowls and jars became more common later on. There are countless island "finding" stories. The first that comes to mind for me is Hotu Matu'a and the dream of Rapa Nui. Besides a few things, this is a very informative video. Great job!
Thank you! It's high praise for me that a student who learned about the methods in a more formal sense finds them to be accurate You're right, I'm certain that islands weren't discovered exclusively by accident, the myths I looked at preserved, I think, some semblance of accidental discovery, but I should think that these were in the minority That and Lapita pottery were topics I was branching into, but I made the decision to cut the video off at purely explaining the methods in as much detail as I could, because there were a lot of examples of people gesturing broadly at navigational methods but very few had engaged properly with the methods
Another thing thats always left out is about micronesian and melanesian navigators used the same methods. The seafaring polynesians came from the West Pacific. Polynesians was able to sail back from Hawaii to Tahiti in the 70's because of 1 man from Micronesia. Mau from satawal Micronesia came to Hawaii to teach the polynesians the lost art all Pacific islanders shared. The canoes that sailed the polynesian islands again in the 2000's were two canoes donated by Micronesia. In honor of Mau the polynesians built a canoe (micronesian design) and sailed it to satawal Micronesia from Hawaii. There a ceremony was held with Mau passing on the title of "po" to his son and 5 polynesians.
@@edwinamugunbay5156 It should be noted that Papa Mau Piailug shared these teachings despite the strict code of secrecy the Pwo* are sworn to. Mau got a lot of grief from his community for sharing the knowledge he had. But he was afraid that no one in his community would learn and pass on the knowledge, hence his willingness to share beyond the Satalwan (and the greater Micronesian group by extension) sphere. Also, all of the five Polynesians were Hawaiian, specifically.
It's extremely impressive how the ancient Polynesians managed to find and colonize Hawai'i twice. I told one that after a few days of not seeing any land, I would have headed back. The ancient maritime powers of the Mediterranean were rarely more than a day from any kind of land. Watching this video has only increased my admiration of the Polynesian navigators.
@@nmarbletoe8210, that would hint at the general direction, but their boats were probably too slow to follow, on a single trip anyway. Ancient Europeans, Levantines, and north Africans were rarely more than a few days from land. For those Polynesians to travel for weeks or months without seeing land would have tested their trust.
@@et76039 yes it is impressive faith! but i'm sure they could turn around also if they didn't find something. probably. Some of the birds are actually going from Tahiti to Alaska so they really lucked out Hawaii was there. Thankfully the Hawaiian archipelago stretches 1000 miles so it's a big target coming from Tahiti. There was also an idea that each major star had an island chain under its zenith, For Hawaii it is Hokule'a, Arcturus, Star of Gladness because it meant home latitude. Luck? God's design? Or knowledge predating Polynesia? idk
As a Maori/Kiwi, this was absolutly astonishing. And how you mentioned the legend of Maui fishing up Aotearoa with his magical hook, i interpreted that as Mauis magical hook being a metaphor for the navigational tools and knowledge past down, assisted in finding/fishing up that land. Ka mau Te Wehi.
Got to pull him up on a few of things though. That pottery ceased being made because of lack of raw material simply isn't true. Here in Aotearoa we have some of the finest pottery clay in the world, so the answer lies elsewhere. Also to suggest islands were discovered accidentally isn't true either. If that were the case the Pacific would never have been colonised. Polynesian techniques for finding land have been well documented, and there was nothing accidental about it. The diagram of how to work out due south from crux is wrong too, but that's a bit pedantic.
As another Maori I'd like to add that not only was the story of Maui use of a fishhook a metaphor , but in fact the use of his Grandmothers jawbone to make the fishhook was allegorical and represents him learning how to navigate from his Grandmother and it was the wisdom and teachings of hers that gave him the ability to sail here .
@@aaronmorgan8819 Aaron there's no evidence of the people who became Māori making pottery, neither in archaeology, whakatauki or any other kōrero. Pottery-making had its heyday in Melanesia. As our ancestors colonised to the east the art declined. By the time they settled Aotearoa it had pretty much if not absolutely finished. No-one knows why, but that's the evidence. Just because the truth doesn't comply with your beliefs doesn't make it any less true. Our mana is our voice. Our mana is our honesty. Let others revise their history. Don't let's revise ours. Let's not fall into that anti-intellectual and shameless trap.
I bought a book from Tonga about Polynesian navigation. I found it hard to follow because of myths and stories, but this video simplified the concepts.
In Aotearoa, the Scorpio constellation for the Maori is named Te Matau a Māui, the fishhook of Māui in the story of Māui fishing up the North Island - Te Ika A Māu. I'd say the Hawaian legend is the same. So when navigating, the constellation sets behind the islands which look to rise out of the sea.
My advanced ancestors knew that AOTEAROA came out of the Ocean millions of years before they arrived here and knew the north Island looked like a fish ... te Ika o maui
I’ve always wondered about that. To recognise Ika island as a fish and Pounamu/waka island as a canoe- HOW THE HECK DO YOU DO THAT? Polynesians are the greatest navigators in known history - but did they have aircraft too?
Do remember the "survivor bias" that applies here... people who sailed in the wrong direction would die out at sea, so the people who made it to other islands were the people whose "hunches" were correct. You could have a circle around a center point. By placing a tall stick at a distance, you can see the stars that rise or fall along where that stick meets the ground. You place your stick in the ground to say "I'm going there", then you follow that heading. If somebody comes back from that journey, saying they found land, their stick is marked. Unmarked sticks represent directions where somebody left and didn't return. Directions which you likely wouldn't want to sail. Over decades, even centuries, these circles would acquire more information. Unmarked sticks might be maintained by the remaining families of the people lost to that direction, like symbols of their watery grave, a place to remember them. Each island would come up with its own version, based on the resources it has available to make sticks or stone sculptures, a high point that can see in different directions from a fixed point, or the heading would be encoded in the placement of the object itself, the direction it faces. No single system would be suitable across different islands, but memory of how it was done on the departing island would give a person ideas for how to replicate something on their new island.
Polynesians would sail against the Trade winds to discover new islands. They would therefore easily return home if not successful and they did. You make it sound like they didnt know what they were doing, when in fact they had generations of knowledge and experience behind them!
No actually survivor bias does not apply here because your "hunches" theory has largely been abandoned by most modern academics. In fact: Andrew Sharp's "1963 drifiting theory essentially argues what you argue but elaborates that migration was a series of one way journeys that were largely accidental, and that exiles from established islands simply drifted onto lands. This view was widely rejected in his time and even more so today as it simply ignores far too much evidence that points to an incredibly complex system of navigation that was traversed more like highways. Remember when James Cook was voyaging through the Pacific; he relied heavily on western navigational methods; with even hiring local Polyneasian navigators who he saw as ill equipped to know navigation - however as he spent more time with them; he became amazed at the array of non-european navigational methods that relied heavily on their connection to the land and sea, concluding the islands could only be populated through navigation. This in no way implies they were the only humans doing so btw as modern literature has found many non-european navigational systems like those of the Indians along the coasts through to South East Asia, indigenous in Madagascar etc. however the positioning of the Pacific and it's proximity to the equator helped facilitate the Polynesian system and it's expanse. So what im pretty much saying is these werent people who just went about the ocean blindfolded, just sending people off to the sea without knowing lol settling the islands of the Pacific was methodical and complex.
I've seen a few videos about this fascinating subject, but I must say that this one is by far the most detailed and clear presentation out there. Great work!
Awesome video, a very comprehensive outline of navigation methods. Whales were also another navigation helper, they stop off and feed predictably along the reefs of particular islands as part of their yearly migrations with names even given to guardians who travelled with particular ancestral canoes.. One technology they did excel at was the storage capacity of the human brain in their schools of learning. with so much encoded in a huge body of knowledge as you mentioned. Indeed the polynesian worldview is opposite to western in many ways, the past is in front of us, as it is known and seen, the future, behind us as it is hidden and unseen. Navigators pull an island towards themselves rather that looking at travelling 'to' it. It's thanks to the late Mau Pialug and the many tireless modern day navigators who have learned all he taught them to rebuild the body of knowledge around polynesian navigating. Without Mau and those he taught, so much would have been lost forever. Thanks for making this in a way that pays respect to the amazing feats of our ancestors.
Wayfinding has always been mysterious and fascinating. To see it explained so clearly feels like Merlin explaining how magic works to an apprentice. The graphics might look low-budget to some, but they're actually fun, and the content is absolutely awesome. I'm going to watch this video again and again.
Additionally by way of navigating by the swells, imagine about the size of a dinner tray woven from curved sticks, a sort of ocean wave map. This was a map of the oceans swells and went aboard the boats as a navigational aid. Not only did it show the nature and direction the primary swells came in, but it also showed the effects of different land masses had on those swells as they struck an island and an echo of that swell returned to sea, showing the location of that land mass. A map of ocean swells and the echoes of different land masses. If you found an echo you found a land mass, and the echo showed the way.
Thanks for bringing that up. I've only watched one documentary about using the swells (wave patterns) and that was produced decades ago. It's disappointing that there are so many videos, and so little awareness of that skill. Otherwise how do you navigate when the sun ad the stars are clouded over day and night. That documentary pivoted around an old Polynesian taking his grandson (I think) out on an outrigger. He sat at the back and sat the young man out on the gunwale as close to the bow as possible and started coaching him on forgetting everything else and just feeling those swells coming and going under him. They they progressed to feeling for multiple patterns and determining that direction each was coming from and how they compared in strength. It was like watching somebody learn how to drum for the first time, keeping all those rhythms and timings in their mind. The old man could identify which body of land each pattern was coming from and how far away they were to determine their own position.
polynesians are absolutely fascinating and hands-down the most talented navigators that this world will ever see, however it kills me how they literally discovered the new world, but never managed to find australia, instead being shocked to learn of its existence
Maori would travel to Australia seasonally each year the Aboriginals called us the turtle dreamers because their arrival would coincide with the sea turtles egg laying cycle.
@@AndrewBlucher sorry I don't know it was told to me by my tipuna (grandparents/ancestors) sorry I can't help you another story was told to me of Tupaia guiding Cook here... Cook was about to give up trying to find NZ & return to England but was told about Tupaia who lived in Tahiti & could Navigate to NZ so Cook persuaded him to guide him which he did upon reaching these shores the locals were seen waving on the beaches and yelling out Tupaia Tupaia which highlighted the frequency of Tupaia's previous visits be reason of the locals familiarity with Tupaia. I really regret not paying more attention when I was younger all that knowledge has passed now.
Thank you for this. It took two days down the RUclips rabbit hole to find my answer. I was curious how ancient cultures such as the Polynesians navigated, by far, the worlds largest ocean and how they survived such journeys. This answered all my questions. 🙏
Thanks for a fine video telling a valuable story. Mau Pialug and David Lewis are personal heroes for maintaining the ancient navigator's art. Became aware of them in the 70's as a multihull enthusiast. Pialug noted island generated swells were sensed from the motion in the stern by the testicles and the direction of islands could be also be detected in the dark by"te lapa" (little lightnings) which were streaks of bioluminescent micro-organisms in te seawater. The orientation of the streaks indicates the direction of the island mass. Navigators are revered as "Ppallu".
11:38 if I’m not mistaken, the name of that constellation called _Tautoru_ should mean “3 people”. In my language (Chuukese; Mortlockese dialect) we call that same constellation _Un Aluwel_ which means “3 Guys”. I know about that constellation lol. And I remember hearing that the Māori had the same meaning for that same constellation.
This is absolutely amazing. The amount of skill, intelligence and familiarity with nature required to be able to achieve such feats speaks volumes on human ingenuity. Thank you for this wonderful video, liked and subbed 😊
Hee hee hee, can you see it now? americans having to get by with these traditions.... yuh no way. Most so out of touch america lives like a spreading disease. Many will agree
Thank you so much for this amazing video. I am currently researching Polynesian navigation for a science unit our school is teaching next term. I have spent hours trying to piece together how a star compass works. This video is by far the most detailed and easiest-to-understand explanation I have seen. My mind is now racing with ideas of how I can share this information in a practical way with fellow staff and students. Ngā mihi nui.
They truly were the best navigators. I always wondered how they survived storms at sea. Also how they avoided the health problems that result from being exposed to the sea, like sores from the salt water.
Thank you so much for your effort! Awesome job! Heard a podcast on this subject and needed a visualization of some sort. I am so thrilled about this. 🙌🏻
Such a great video! Neil DeGrasse Tyson piqued my interest in this topic during Cosmos: Possible Worlds, and I'm so glad you were able to shed more light on the topic! Excellent video!
this is incredible. well done sir. I had looked for a video with a more in depth over view like this video on the subject a few years ago, but nothing existed on youtube at the time.
The algorithm gives you more of what you engage with :-) If I watch an F1 vid, it will offer me more of them. If I watch a Cat vid it'll offer more of them. More so if I like, comment, or subscribe.
This is my ideal RUclips video - introducing a topic I pretty much never think about, getting me into it, then blowing my mind with its depth/complexity. Great job.
The wording your looking for canoe's is Waka mighty ships of the pacific, double hull waka's over 100 feet long and twice as big as the Endeavor. These were one of the great wonders of the world at the time for a pacific nation.
Wow. What an amzing video to stumble across. Fantastically informative & clearly conveyed. Thank you. I've seen a few, incuding full docs. This was by far the best.
Excellent, concise explanation of how WE were once attuned to our planet. Mankind would have evolved with 'nature.' Intriguing to understand The World in their perspective.
Very good, simple temperature works well in the south pacific for latitude - southern french polynesia is colder, NZ latitude way colder. If you sailed 1 or 2000km south by accident in this area - you would soon know.
I don''t appreciate you calling New Zealand Aotearoa. This is the modern trend, but it has no base in fact. Great Barrier Island was called Aotea by the maori.
That is brilliant stuff! I guess when the ancient Polynesians first encountered Europeans and discovered the European's lack of navigational skills, they might have thought to themselves: "Ahh, the kids these days aren't worth a huckle".
I totally agree . Thankyou ! I'm not clever enough to follow all of this but I have always wondered how it was done and You have shed some light on what for me has always been a mystery . THANKYOU !!!!!
My ancestors: "To get from Hawaii to New Zealand all we need to do is triangulate 27 stars by memory, no worries". Me: "Damn I forgot to set the reminder on my phone to remind me today was rubbish day"
I don't know if I would have said they did it entirely by accident.... Your video and explanation were utterly superb! This was the best one I have seen in many days, and I have watched excellent ones on various subjects to-day! Some of these might still be in use. Not just as a legacy or a preservation revival, but as an actual necessity. As I understand it, of our 6plus bil on the planet (more than 8 is more than six!), there're fifty thousand or so people who permanently navigate across the sea on ancient designs of craft.
Yeah, that ending was weird. It was a throwback to the days when anthropologists claimed Polynesians drifted around the Pacific until they ran into land.
In 1990 we paddled 90 man waka Te Awatea Hou from Waikawa, south island toTitahi Bay, North island in Aotearoa. 14 hours in the mostly the dark night. On ourvreturn, our instructions were to steer left of Venus in order to enter the channel known as Raukawa or Cook Strait betwen the two islands.🥝🇳🇿😎
This series should be taught in elementary school's history/science classes, as a way to "Perpetuate/Pass the Torch" onto the succeeding generations coz "What good is knowledge if it's Not passed on?"....It's NEVER Too Late To Start!
There must have been navigator apprenticeship. I cannot imagine an older navigator not passing on his knowledge to the next generation. Now, perhaps they were very selective on who to apprentice, but I would be very shocked if every new generation had to learn the trade all on their own.
I think they had guilds, this knowledge was kept in families. In tonga the tuita family, a chiefly family is the traditional navigator family for the king.
I believe it was just centuries of trial and effort, I mean the Polynesian islands are all small so of course they’re going to want to travel and it was just years of learning from mistakes and learning to use what was around them very primal instinct vibes
I imagine you can learn starpaths by sitting and looking at a palm at night & moving when you'll want to learn a new one. You'll end up being instinctive.
Sorry to be a pedantic toad but the title might be a bit click-baity - there is no evidence Polynesians travelled from Hawa'ii to NZ (I know you don't claim it in the vid). Got to pick you up on a couple of things though. Pottery ceased being made for some other reason than lack of clay. Plenty of islands have clay suitable for pottery, it simply wasn't utilised. Also to suggest islands were discovered accidentally only evidences your need to brush up on Polynesian techniques for finding land.
Fascinating- absolutely fascinating... billions of us see an ocean and see nothing but ocean... these guys saw paths that took them thousands of kilometres
Don't forget the Gilligan issue. A fisherman goes out to fish and a tropical cyclone comes and sends him to foreign waters and there they find a new place.
The big problem is the change of language type ? The people from Hawaii spoke a guttural language and the other islands all speak a malady languages that are very similar. It was not until the Hawaiians were invalid by the Tahiti in the 1600th century they started speaking a malady language. They followed the birds from island to island very simple but effective and there were a lot more birds pre Polynesian invasion. The latest im hearing they started in Samoa and moved out
not true sorry chris. the first people of hawaii were eastern polynesian, just like the first people of easter island and new zealand, and the people who likely reached america. they would all have been able to understand each other.
@@eeeatenwe all have the same ancestry. Some of our ancestors chose chose to keep voyaging by choice and sometimes not by choice but we all have common ancestral ties that of our austronesian ancestors.
You already know they were telling the women “yeah sorry you can’t come sail with us you don’t have balls to read the swells properly” classic guys being dudes
Not to denigrate the remarkable achievements of the Polynesians in any way, but Melanesians also had ocean going technology to cross parts of the Pacific. I grew up in Fiji, which lies at the intersection of Melanesia and Polynesia. Pre-European contact Fijians had a wide range of sailing craft, including large double hulled war canoes (drua) that could carry up to 200 men and that were quite capable of travelling from Fiji to its nearest neighbours in Tonga and Samoa. Steering by the balls is news to me, and frankly I doubt the veracity of what sounds like an outlandish claim. Any man who has stood on an open windswept deck will attest to the scrotum tightening effects of cold weather. But I have heard of traditional navigators who literally stuck their hands over the side of the boat to feel where they were in the open ocean. This appears far more plausible given the potential sensitivity of finger tips to wave energy reflected off reefs and land.
The Lapita culture as well as later plainware can be found on some of the more western islands of Polynesia such as Samoa and Tonga, so it's not that Polynesians Didn't have pottery in fact they had a unique culture around the type of pottery that was made , it just seems to fade from the archeological record as Polynesian settlement of the pacific Islands go's on for not very apparent reasons. Personally i find this very interesting as there are not very many examples of a technology as useful as pottery essentially disappearing from an entire people group, and not much research has been done into the reasons why pottery disappeared as good clay's exist in both Hawaii and New Zealand
@@eeeaten Yeah my wording may have been a bit poor there, for sure it had already disappeared by that point so the quality of clay in nz/hawaii is irrelevant. i just find the subject fascinating as it's quite unique that a fundamental technology such as pottery is lost to a whole people group.
A compas is easy to understand and helps immensely in north-south navigating. But europeans struggled for centuries to find a reliable way of doing east-west navigating.
I would also like to add Tattooing into awesome video, we Samoans have traditional tattoos that the woman get that are actually hand compasses. This is used to measure angles and determine the position of celestial bodies in relation to their position.
By aligning a reference point, such as a star, with the thumb or another part of the hand, they were able to estimate the angle between the horizon and the celestial body. This angle, combined with knowledge of the time of day or night helped determine their approximate position and direction.
The Polynesians probably collected and amassed the largest repertoire of navigational techniques of any culture.
I was at Magic Island near Ala Moana the day the Hōkūleʻa completed its worldwide voyage in 2017. I never got to navigate a canoe, but I took celestial navigation at University of Hawaii in '19. My celestial navigation teacher worked with the Polynesian Voyaging Society, and navigated the Makaliʻi to Tahiti from Hawaiʻi using traditional methods. I'm surprised at how much you got right. But I disagree that Oceanians always found these islands on *accident*, as even your evidence proves they were able to knowingly navigate their way to otherwise uninhabited islands. I'd also like to point out that Polynesians used lapita pottery, notably in Tonga and Sāmoa. Why they stopped is up for speculation, but wood bowls and jars became more common later on. There are countless island "finding" stories. The first that comes to mind for me is Hotu Matu'a and the dream of Rapa Nui. Besides a few things, this is a very informative video. Great job!
Thank you! It's high praise for me that a student who learned about the methods in a more formal sense finds them to be accurate
You're right, I'm certain that islands weren't discovered exclusively by accident, the myths I looked at preserved, I think, some semblance of accidental discovery, but I should think that these were in the minority
That and Lapita pottery were topics I was branching into, but I made the decision to cut the video off at purely explaining the methods in as much detail as I could, because there were a lot of examples of people gesturing broadly at navigational methods but very few had engaged properly with the methods
Another thing thats always left out is about micronesian and melanesian navigators used the same methods. The seafaring polynesians came from the West Pacific. Polynesians was able to sail back from Hawaii to Tahiti in the 70's because of 1 man from Micronesia. Mau from satawal Micronesia came to Hawaii to teach the polynesians the lost art all Pacific islanders shared. The canoes that sailed the polynesian islands again in the 2000's were two canoes donated by Micronesia. In honor of Mau the polynesians built a canoe (micronesian design) and sailed it to satawal Micronesia from Hawaii. There a ceremony was held with Mau passing on the title of "po" to his son and 5 polynesians.
@@edwinamugunbay5156 It should be noted that Papa Mau Piailug shared these teachings despite the strict code of secrecy the Pwo* are sworn to. Mau got a lot of grief from his community for sharing the knowledge he had. But he was afraid that no one in his community would learn and pass on the knowledge, hence his willingness to share beyond the Satalwan (and the greater Micronesian group by extension) sphere.
Also, all of the five Polynesians were Hawaiian, specifically.
@@mathoskualawa9000 lol @ "Hawaiians specifically". Duly noted. My apologies.
Wow! I'm impressed that you witnessed those voyagers and appreciate the knowledge. Tell the stories. Best to you.
It's extremely impressive how the ancient Polynesians managed to find and colonize Hawai'i twice. I told one that after a few days of not seeing any land, I would have headed back. The ancient maritime powers of the Mediterranean were rarely more than a day from any kind of land. Watching this video has only increased my admiration of the Polynesian navigators.
The Tahitians knew there was land to the north by watching migratory land birds :)
@@nmarbletoe8210, that would hint at the general direction, but their boats were probably too slow to follow, on a single trip anyway. Ancient Europeans, Levantines, and north Africans were rarely more than a few days from land. For those Polynesians to travel for weeks or months without seeing land would have tested their trust.
@@et76039 yes it is impressive faith! but i'm sure they could turn around also if they didn't find something. probably.
Some of the birds are actually going from Tahiti to Alaska so they really lucked out Hawaii was there.
Thankfully the Hawaiian archipelago stretches 1000 miles so it's a big target coming from Tahiti.
There was also an idea that each major star had an island chain under its zenith, For Hawaii it is Hokule'a, Arcturus, Star of Gladness because it meant home latitude. Luck? God's design? Or knowledge predating Polynesia? idk
@@nmarbletoe8210 and the South west
@et76039 there was nothing to go back to they were peoples exiled from home and forced to find new land or perish at sea.
As a Maori/Kiwi, this was absolutly astonishing. And how you mentioned the legend of Maui fishing up Aotearoa with his magical hook, i interpreted that as Mauis magical hook being a metaphor for the navigational tools and knowledge past down, assisted in finding/fishing up that land.
Ka mau Te Wehi.
Got to pull him up on a few of things though. That pottery ceased being made because of lack of raw material simply isn't true. Here in Aotearoa we have some of the finest pottery clay in the world, so the answer lies elsewhere. Also to suggest islands were discovered accidentally isn't true either. If that were the case the Pacific would never have been colonised. Polynesian techniques for finding land have been well documented, and there was nothing accidental about it. The diagram of how to work out due south from crux is wrong too, but that's a bit pedantic.
As another Maori I'd like to add that not only was the story of Maui use of a fishhook a metaphor , but in fact the use of his Grandmothers jawbone to make the fishhook was allegorical and represents him learning how to navigate from his Grandmother and it was the wisdom and teachings of hers that gave him the ability to sail here .
@@poisontoad8007yes, the firing of clay relates to the creation myth of Tane Mahuta and Hine Ahuone...
Whairepo, the north island was the stingray.
Aotearoa was the south island, the waka of the gods which then became Maui's waka
@@aaronmorgan8819 Aaron there's no evidence of the people who became Māori making pottery, neither in archaeology, whakatauki or any other kōrero. Pottery-making had its heyday in Melanesia. As our ancestors colonised to the east the art declined. By the time they settled Aotearoa it had pretty much if not absolutely finished. No-one knows why, but that's the evidence. Just because the truth doesn't comply with your beliefs doesn't make it any less true. Our mana is our voice. Our mana is our honesty. Let others revise their history. Don't let's revise ours. Let's not fall into that anti-intellectual and shameless trap.
What a fantastic video! The effort put into this deserves to be recognised!
It was brilliant.
I bought a book from Tonga about Polynesian navigation. I found it hard to follow because of myths and stories, but this video simplified the concepts.
18:35. I knew it took balls to navigate the open Pacific. Now you just proved it.
Passed down & followed from generation to generation
In Aotearoa, the Scorpio constellation for the Maori is named Te Matau a Māui, the fishhook of Māui in the story of Māui fishing up the North Island - Te Ika A Māu. I'd say the Hawaian legend is the same. So when navigating, the constellation sets behind the islands which look to rise out of the sea.
My advanced ancestors knew that AOTEAROA came out of the Ocean millions of years before they arrived here and knew the north Island looked like a fish ... te Ika o maui
I’ve always wondered about that. To recognise Ika island as a fish and Pounamu/waka island as a canoe- HOW THE HECK DO YOU DO THAT?
Polynesians are the greatest navigators in known history - but did they have aircraft too?
Awesome job with this. I learned a lot!
Mr breast, what caused the long pause?
Do remember the "survivor bias" that applies here... people who sailed in the wrong direction would die out at sea, so the people who made it to other islands were the people whose "hunches" were correct.
You could have a circle around a center point. By placing a tall stick at a distance, you can see the stars that rise or fall along where that stick meets the ground. You place your stick in the ground to say "I'm going there", then you follow that heading. If somebody comes back from that journey, saying they found land, their stick is marked. Unmarked sticks represent directions where somebody left and didn't return. Directions which you likely wouldn't want to sail. Over decades, even centuries, these circles would acquire more information. Unmarked sticks might be maintained by the remaining families of the people lost to that direction, like symbols of their watery grave, a place to remember them. Each island would come up with its own version, based on the resources it has available to make sticks or stone sculptures, a high point that can see in different directions from a fixed point, or the heading would be encoded in the placement of the object itself, the direction it faces. No single system would be suitable across different islands, but memory of how it was done on the departing island would give a person ideas for how to replicate something on their new island.
Polynesians would sail against the Trade winds to discover new islands. They would therefore easily return home if not successful and they did.
You make it sound like they didnt know what they were doing, when in fact they had generations of knowledge and experience behind them!
A hunch ? You can't be serious ? Trying to find land in the Pacific is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
No actually survivor bias does not apply here because your "hunches" theory has largely been abandoned by most modern academics. In fact: Andrew Sharp's "1963 drifiting theory essentially argues what you argue but elaborates that migration was a series of one way journeys that were largely accidental, and that exiles from established islands simply drifted onto lands. This view was widely rejected in his time and even more so today as it simply ignores far too much evidence that points to an incredibly complex system of navigation that was traversed more like highways. Remember when James Cook was voyaging through the Pacific; he relied heavily on western navigational methods; with even hiring local Polyneasian navigators who he saw as ill equipped to know navigation - however as he spent more time with them; he became amazed at the array of non-european navigational methods that relied heavily on their connection to the land and sea, concluding the islands could only be populated through navigation. This in no way implies they were the only humans doing so btw as modern literature has found many non-european navigational systems like those of the Indians along the coasts through to South East Asia, indigenous in Madagascar etc. however the positioning of the Pacific and it's proximity to the equator helped facilitate the Polynesian system and it's expanse.
So what im pretty much saying is these werent people who just went about the ocean blindfolded, just sending people off to the sea without knowing lol settling the islands of the Pacific was methodical and complex.
I've seen a few videos about this fascinating subject, but I must say that this one is by far the most detailed and clear presentation out there. Great work!
Awesome video, a very comprehensive outline of navigation methods. Whales were also another navigation helper, they stop off and feed predictably along the reefs of particular islands as part of their yearly migrations with names even given to guardians who travelled with particular ancestral canoes.. One technology they did excel at was the storage capacity of the human brain in their schools of learning. with so much encoded in a huge body of knowledge as you mentioned. Indeed the polynesian worldview is opposite to western in many ways, the past is in front of us, as it is known and seen, the future, behind us as it is hidden and unseen. Navigators pull an island towards themselves rather that looking at travelling 'to' it. It's thanks to the late Mau Pialug and the many tireless modern day navigators who have learned all he taught them to rebuild the body of knowledge around polynesian navigating. Without Mau and those he taught, so much would have been lost forever. Thanks for making this in a way that pays respect to the amazing feats of our ancestors.
Nice to see this video come to fruition after so many months. It was definitely worth the wait you did a great job Guthlac!
Wayfinding has always been mysterious and fascinating. To see it explained so clearly feels like Merlin explaining how magic works to an apprentice. The graphics might look low-budget to some, but they're actually fun, and the content is absolutely awesome. I'm going to watch this video again and again.
Additionally by way of navigating by the swells, imagine about the size of a dinner tray woven from curved sticks, a sort of ocean wave map. This was a map of the oceans swells and went aboard the boats as a navigational aid. Not only did it show the nature and direction the primary swells came in, but it also showed the effects of different land masses had on those swells as they struck an island and an echo of that swell returned to sea, showing the location of that land mass. A map of ocean swells and the echoes of different land masses. If you found an echo you found a land mass, and the echo showed the way.
Thanks for bringing that up. I've only watched one documentary about using the swells (wave patterns) and that was produced decades ago. It's disappointing that there are so many videos, and so little awareness of that skill. Otherwise how do you navigate when the sun ad the stars are clouded over day and night.
That documentary pivoted around an old Polynesian taking his grandson (I think) out on an outrigger. He sat at the back and sat the young man out on the gunwale as close to the bow as possible and started coaching him on forgetting everything else and just feeling those swells coming and going under him. They they progressed to feeling for multiple patterns and determining that direction each was coming from and how they compared in strength.
It was like watching somebody learn how to drum for the first time, keeping all those rhythms and timings in their mind. The old man could identify which body of land each pattern was coming from and how far away they were to determine their own position.
Also birds
polynesians are absolutely fascinating and hands-down the most talented navigators that this world will ever see, however it kills me how they literally discovered the new world, but never managed to find australia, instead being shocked to learn of its existence
I think the Maori knew of Australia.
Maori would travel to Australia seasonally each year the Aboriginals called us the turtle dreamers because their arrival would coincide with the sea turtles egg laying cycle.
@@nicktorea4017 Hi Nick, do you know where I can read more about this? Regards, Andy
@@AndrewBlucher sorry I don't know it was told to me by my tipuna (grandparents/ancestors) sorry I can't help you another story was told to me of Tupaia guiding Cook here... Cook was about to give up trying to find NZ & return to England but was told about Tupaia who lived in Tahiti & could Navigate to NZ so Cook persuaded him to guide him which he did upon reaching these shores the locals were seen waving on the beaches and yelling out Tupaia Tupaia which highlighted the frequency of Tupaia's previous visits be reason of the locals familiarity with Tupaia. I really regret not paying more attention when I was younger all that knowledge has passed now.
@@nicktorea4017 Thanks Nick.
Thank you for this. It took two days down the RUclips rabbit hole to find my answer. I was curious how ancient cultures such as the Polynesians navigated, by far, the worlds largest ocean and how they survived such journeys. This answered all my questions. 🙏
Thanks for a fine video telling a valuable story. Mau Pialug and David Lewis are personal heroes for maintaining the ancient navigator's art. Became aware of them in the 70's as a multihull enthusiast.
Pialug noted island generated swells were sensed from the motion in the stern by the testicles and the direction of islands could be also be detected in the dark by"te lapa" (little lightnings) which were streaks of bioluminescent micro-organisms in te seawater. The orientation of the streaks indicates the direction of the island mass. Navigators are revered as "Ppallu".
11:38 if I’m not mistaken, the name of that constellation called _Tautoru_ should mean “3 people”. In my language (Chuukese; Mortlockese dialect) we call that same constellation _Un Aluwel_ which means “3 Guys”. I know about that constellation lol. And I remember hearing that the Māori had the same meaning for that same constellation.
Very interesting. In Tongan, we call it _Alotolu_ which means "the three rowers"
I loved this. I was practically disappointed when i got to the conclusion because it was coming to an end and I wanted MORE.
This is absolutely amazing. The amount of skill, intelligence and familiarity with nature required to be able to achieve such feats speaks volumes on human ingenuity. Thank you for this wonderful video, liked and subbed 😊
Hee hee hee, can you see it now? americans having to get by with these traditions.... yuh no way. Most so out of touch america lives like a spreading disease. Many will agree
Thank you so much for this amazing video. I am currently researching Polynesian navigation for a science unit our school is teaching next term. I have spent hours trying to piece together how a star compass works. This video is by far the most detailed and easiest-to-understand explanation I have seen. My mind is now racing with ideas of how I can share this information in a practical way with fellow staff and students. Ngā mihi nui.
They truly were the best navigators. I always wondered how they survived storms at sea. Also how they avoided the health problems that result from being exposed to the sea, like sores from the salt water.
Thank you so much for your effort! Awesome job! Heard a podcast on this subject and needed a visualization of some sort. I am so thrilled about this. 🙌🏻
Such a great video! Neil DeGrasse Tyson piqued my interest in this topic during Cosmos: Possible Worlds, and I'm so glad you were able to shed more light on the topic! Excellent video!
this is incredible. well done sir.
I had looked for a video with a more in depth over view like this video on the subject a few years ago, but nothing existed on youtube at the time.
Your content is awesome. I hate how RUclips doesn't promote educative videos like these.
The algorithm gives you more of what you engage with :-)
If I watch an F1 vid, it will offer me more of them. If I watch a Cat vid it'll offer more of them. More so if I like, comment, or subscribe.
This is my ideal RUclips video - introducing a topic I pretty much never think about, getting me into it, then blowing my mind with its depth/complexity. Great job.
The wording your looking for canoe's is Waka mighty ships of the pacific, double hull waka's over 100 feet long and twice as big as the Endeavor. These were one of the great wonders of the world at the time for a pacific nation.
Wow. What an amzing video to stumble across. Fantastically informative & clearly conveyed. Thank you. I've seen a few, incuding full docs. This was by far the best.
I love this video! The ability of humans to come with solutions to problems is nothing short of incredible.
Excellent, concise explanation of how WE were once attuned to our planet.
Mankind would have evolved with 'nature.' Intriguing to understand The World in their perspective.
Most excellent video. As someone who is well versed In all aspects of aerial navigation I loved the additional survival navigation theroys.
Very good, simple temperature works well in the south pacific for latitude - southern french polynesia is colder, NZ latitude way colder. If you sailed 1 or 2000km south by accident in this area - you would soon know.
Cook had a chief with him on his ship and there is a copy of the map the chief drew for Cook .
I have ask this question of how they navigated to New Zealand for years, this is an excellent production thanks.
Maori were very clever people. They invented modern trench warfare after all.
This was so informative and awesome! Thanks for putting it together
This is one of the most interesting things I have ever seen - I will share this knowledge with my class. Thank you.
Fascinating stuff as usual! This is something i've been wondering about for years and now i know!
Excellent video.
This is one of my favorite topics. I read about this in an old National Geographic decades ago. It's unforgettable.
As a polynesian descendant, I thank you.
Thank you so much, this video is so underrated.
They traveled during the height of the last ice age. You could basically walk so very very short trips were needed on boats
Nope, there were no Polynesians back then.
I believe that to be correct.
@@Wildflower27823 you are incorrect
We inherited our knowledge from our austronesian ancestors who traversed the Kai long ago
Appreciate you referring to New Zealand as Aotearoa. Great video.
I don''t appreciate you calling New Zealand Aotearoa. This is the modern trend, but it has no base in fact. Great Barrier Island was called Aotea by the maori.
That is brilliant stuff!
I guess when the ancient Polynesians first encountered Europeans and discovered the European's lack of navigational skills, they might have thought to themselves: "Ahh, the kids these days aren't worth a huckle".
I totally agree . Thankyou ! I'm not clever enough to follow all of this but I have always wondered how it was done and You have shed some light on what for me has always been a mystery . THANKYOU !!!!!
Amazing video. You have to love anything that illuminates and makes vivid the realities of ancient peoples
My ancestors: "To get from Hawaii to New Zealand all we need to do is triangulate 27 stars by memory, no worries". Me: "Damn I forgot to set the reminder on my phone to remind me today was rubbish day"
I don't know if I would have said they did it entirely by accident....
Your video and explanation were utterly superb! This was the best one I have seen in many days, and I have watched excellent ones on various subjects to-day!
Some of these might still be in use. Not just as a legacy or a preservation revival, but as an actual necessity. As I understand it, of our 6plus bil on the planet (more than 8 is more than six!), there're fifty thousand or so people who permanently navigate across the sea on ancient designs of craft.
Yes, I loved this video, right up until the last sentence.
@@TillyOrifice yes that last sentence was a weird and inaccurate statement
Yeah, that ending was weird. It was a throwback to the days when anthropologists claimed Polynesians drifted around the Pacific until they ran into land.
Fantastic! You must have done a lot of research with this and it shows!
Great job! I learned so much from this! :D
One of the most interesting videos I have watched on youtube, great work.
Interesting that you didn't mention the Polynesian stick charts.
Right? Or how they judged how there is land in a certain direction.
Really good watch. I’ve always been fascinated by these sea people.
Beautiful lesson and demonstration.Thank you very much.
In 1990 we paddled 90 man waka Te Awatea Hou from Waikawa, south island toTitahi Bay, North island in Aotearoa. 14 hours in the mostly the dark night. On ourvreturn, our instructions were to steer left of Venus in order to enter the channel known as Raukawa or Cook Strait betwen the two islands.🥝🇳🇿😎
just found this channel because of Anglo Saxon stuff
love your content already!
Very factual and informative, thanks for all your hard work! 💪😤
Damn. As a Maori, I never knew how clever my ancestors were. But then they did invent modern trench warfare.
They are the children of the ocean! ❤❤❤
18:35 proves why men are the best navigators. Its something youre born with.
This series should be taught in elementary school's history/science classes, as a way to "Perpetuate/Pass the Torch" onto the succeeding generations coz "What good is knowledge if it's Not passed on?"....It's NEVER Too Late To Start!
I really enjoyed this video. Thanks for putting it together.
Star paths! Ingenious! It sounds like the different addresses the SG teams had to learn to return to Earth!
Thank god for the austronesians who invented the ocean navigation since first set off from Taiwan!
Yes thanks to our austronesian ancestors!!! we made it🤙🏽
There must have been navigator apprenticeship. I cannot imagine an older navigator not passing on his knowledge to the next generation. Now, perhaps they were very selective on who to apprentice, but I would be very shocked if every new generation had to learn the trade all on their own.
I think they had guilds, this knowledge was kept in families. In tonga the tuita family, a chiefly family is the traditional navigator family for the king.
Yeah knowledge doesn't work like that. It's an accumulation of shared experiences.
I believe it was just centuries of trial and effort, I mean the Polynesian islands are all small so of course they’re going to want to travel and it was just years of learning from mistakes and learning to use what was around them very primal instinct vibes
It’s knowledge past on to us from our austronesian ancestors who migrated from Southeast Asia
I assume they navigated very well
Farmers in Java also use stars to start farming.
It is said that the Navigators never slept on the journey so they must in some way keep track of where they are on the journey
brilliant insight. thanks.
I imagine you can learn starpaths by sitting and looking at a palm at night & moving when you'll want to learn a new one. You'll end up being instinctive.
Just utterly fascinating.
Wow. Dipping the coin purse to check the swell. I do similar to check the wind, maybe even a faint breeze.
Great informative vid mate👍
Sorry to be a pedantic toad but the title might be a bit click-baity - there is no evidence Polynesians travelled from Hawa'ii to NZ (I know you don't claim it in the vid). Got to pick you up on a couple of things though. Pottery ceased being made for some other reason than lack of clay. Plenty of islands have clay suitable for pottery, it simply wasn't utilised. Also to suggest islands were discovered accidentally only evidences your need to brush up on Polynesian techniques for finding land.
Besides the fact that we are both Polynesian lol
Fascinating- absolutely fascinating... billions of us see an ocean and see nothing but ocean... these guys saw paths that took them thousands of kilometres
Don't forget the Gilligan issue. A fisherman goes out to fish and a tropical cyclone comes and sends him to foreign waters and there they find a new place.
A three hour cruise.....
If he cannot come back for some women. it ain't going to lead to much
The big problem is the change of language type ? The people from Hawaii spoke a guttural language and the other islands all speak a malady languages that are very similar. It was not until the Hawaiians were invalid by the Tahiti in the 1600th century they started speaking a malady language. They followed the birds from island to island very simple but effective and there were a lot more birds pre Polynesian invasion. The latest im hearing they started in Samoa and moved out
not true sorry chris. the first people of hawaii were eastern polynesian, just like the first people of easter island and new zealand, and the people who likely reached america. they would all have been able to understand each other.
@@eeeatenwe all have the same ancestry. Some of our ancestors chose chose to keep voyaging by choice and sometimes not by choice but we all have common ancestral ties that of our austronesian ancestors.
@@goukhanakul are you disagreeing with something i said?
@@eeeaten no I think I accidentally tapped you’re profile name before I wrote my comment.
@@goukhanakul aha fair enough - i agree with you :)
One of the best vids on RUclips, learned a lot 👏
Phenomenal video man. This was so fascinating
Taught me a lot! Thanks.
You already know they were telling the women “yeah sorry you can’t come sail with us you don’t have balls to read the swells properly” classic guys being dudes
On the plants side, you missed paper mulberries. It's what was used to make clothes before they encountered Europeans.
Not to denigrate the remarkable achievements of the Polynesians in any way, but Melanesians also had ocean going technology to cross parts of the Pacific. I grew up in Fiji, which lies at the intersection of Melanesia and Polynesia. Pre-European contact Fijians had a wide range of sailing craft, including large double hulled war canoes (drua) that could carry up to 200 men and that were quite capable of travelling from Fiji to its nearest neighbours in Tonga and Samoa. Steering by the balls is news to me, and frankly I doubt the veracity of what sounds like an outlandish claim. Any man who has stood on an open windswept deck will attest to the scrotum tightening effects of cold weather. But I have heard of traditional navigators who literally stuck their hands over the side of the boat to feel where they were in the open ocean. This appears far more plausible given the potential sensitivity of finger tips to wave energy reflected off reefs and land.
It’s because we all have similar ancestors.
Samoa is the original island they nicknamed Samoa "The Navigator Islands".
this is really fantastic content, big ups 👍👍
The great thing about star navigation is that you can start to learn it while being on land.
Outstanding, sir. Thank you.
Very interesting!
this would make an amazing videogame
this is really really really good ....... thank you for creating it
Something tells me this information could be very useful in near future.
The Lapita culture as well as later plainware can be found on some of the more western islands of Polynesia such as Samoa and Tonga, so it's not that Polynesians Didn't have pottery in fact they had a unique culture around the type of pottery that was made , it just seems to fade from the archeological record as Polynesian settlement of the pacific Islands go's on for not very apparent reasons.
Personally i find this very interesting as there are not very many examples of a technology as useful as pottery essentially disappearing from an entire people group, and not much research has been done into the reasons why pottery disappeared as good clay's exist in both Hawaii and New Zealand
the lapita pottery culture had disappeared long before the discovery of hawaii and new zealand
If you have no grain food, pottery becomes unnecessary.
@@eeeaten Yeah my wording may have been a bit poor there, for sure it had already disappeared by that point so the quality of clay in nz/hawaii is irrelevant. i just find the subject fascinating as it's quite unique that a fundamental technology such as pottery is lost to a whole people group.
Go to an issue of National Geographic from 30-40 years ago. Read, “Wind, Wave, Island, Star”.
Courtesy of Half Vast Flying
Great video, but the only thing you missed was that all the split system bodies rise and fall on the same line in the sky: the ecliptic.
Maybe the ancestors of the Polynesians had a lot of practice with all the archipelagos in maritime South East Asia
definitely
Yes we own it to our austronesian ancestors! And I say to them we made it🤙🏽 for there is a long line of kupuna that
Im appreciative for.
Hey! I just found out your channel! Time to binge watch!
A compas is easy to understand and helps immensely in north-south navigating. But europeans struggled for centuries to find a reliable way of doing east-west navigating.
Great video!