Academic Reading — Test 162

Reading passage

Long before European ships ventured into the open Pacific, the islands scattered across this vast ocean had already been discovered and settled by Polynesian voyagers. Sailing in double-hulled canoes built from timber lashed together with plaited fibre, these seafarers crossed thousands of kilometres of water without compasses, charts or any of the mechanical instruments later associated with maritime exploration. That they reached islands as widely separated as Hawaii, New Zealand and Rapa Nui, often mere specks of land in an immense expanse of sea, remains one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of human movement. For a long time many outside observers assumed these journeys were the product of chance, supposing that canoes had simply drifted with the currents until they happened upon land. Modern research has largely overturned this view, demonstrating instead that Polynesian navigation was a deliberate and highly disciplined practice. At the heart of this practice lay an intimate knowledge of the night sky. Navigators memorised the points on the horizon where particular stars rose and set, and they used a sequence of such stars, one following another as each climbed too high to be useful, to hold a steady bearing through the hours of darkness. This system, sometimes described as a star compass, did not depend on any physical object but existed entirely in the navigator's trained memory. During daylight, when the stars were invisible, the position of the sun at dawn and dusk offered comparable guidance, and the direction of the prevailing wind, once fixed against a known star at night, could be carried forward as a reference until the next nightfall. The ocean itself supplied a second body of information, arguably more subtle than the sky. Swells, the long and regular waves generated by distant weather systems, travel across the sea in consistent directions for great distances. An experienced navigator could feel the rhythm of these swells through the movement of the hull and distinguish one swell pattern from another even when several crossed at the same time. Because islands interrupt and reflect approaching swells, the disturbance they create can be detected at a considerable distance, betraying the presence of land that is still far below the horizon. Reading such patterns demanded years of apprenticeship, and the relevant skills were typically passed from one generation to the next by word of mouth rather than written down. A range of natural signs further extended the navigator's reach as an island drew near. Certain seabirds, notably terns and noddies, fly out from land each morning to fish and return reliably at evening, so the sighting of such a bird in the late afternoon could indicate both the existence and the rough direction of land. The accumulation of cloud above a high island, the greenish tint that a lagoon can cast onto the underside of clouds, and floating vegetation carried out to sea all formed part of a wider repertoire of clues. None of these signs was decisive on its own; rather, the navigator combined many weak indications into a single confident judgement, continually adjusting an estimate of the canoe's position relative to its intended destination. The decline of these traditions following European contact was steep, and on many islands the deep knowledge of long-distance voyaging was very nearly lost altogether. In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, a deliberate revival took place. A double-hulled canoe named Hokule'a, built to resemble traditional vessels, completed a celebrated voyage from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976 using no modern instruments at all. The navigation was guided by Mau Piailug, a master navigator from the island of Satawal in Micronesia, where the old methods had survived more completely than elsewhere. His willingness to teach a younger generation helped to ensure that the techniques would not disappear, and the voyage did much to persuade a sceptical public that intentional navigation, rather than accidental drift, had peopled the Pacific. Scholars continue to debate the finer details of how the settlement of the region unfolded, including the precise routes taken and the timing of particular migrations. Computer simulations of winds and currents have been used to test which journeys were feasible under given conditions, and these models tend to support the conclusion that the islands were reached through purposeful sailing rather than by drift. What is no longer seriously disputed is that Polynesian navigators possessed a sophisticated and coherent science of the sea, one that integrated observation of the stars, the swells, the winds and the living world into a body of practical knowledge refined over many centuries. That this knowledge was sustained without writing makes its accuracy and endurance all the more impressive.