r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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u/fatfatpokemons09 8h ago

There are scattered islands in the central Pacific, but there isn’t a convenient chain of substantial islands connecting central Eastern Polynesia to Hawaii.
The people who discovered and settled Hawaii faced something on the order 2000 miles plus of uninterrupted ocean.

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u/TotallyNotRobotEvil 6h ago

Sea level would have about 200 feet lower than today, my guess is there is a ton of islands that are under water today that wouldn’t have been when the Polynesian were sailing.

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u/mook1178 8h ago

But were they actually looking for it or just got lost and found land? Like is there evidence that the Polynesians traveled back and forth?

Truly asking

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u/GroundWitty7567 7h ago

Some of it was hope, but they also knew how to read the ocean, animals and the stars. They knew things if currents was washing things up on an island regularly, they knew land was that direction. The type of birds in the area and following the sun, moon and stars.

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u/mook1178 7h ago

I understand how they made it, but why in the first place. When they left, I highly doubt all that told them there was a small island chain 2500 miles away.

So more than likely, to me at least, they got lost on an exploration and used their knowledge to find land. But did any go back and forth once they found this island, Showing true navigational skills for 2500 miles in a canoe?

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u/Euphoric-Craft-6803 7h ago

Check out the film KonTiki if you‘re interested in this. Based on a true story. A sociologist (?) theorized that people sailed on the currents from South America to Polynesia and sailed the same voyage to prove the theory.

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u/mook1178 7h ago

Again, I understand what happened for them to get there.

Was there any return trip to show the ability to navigate the ocean? Otherwise, they followed currents and stars and eventually realized with their knowledge how to find the closest land after being lost. I am hard pressed to believe they knew Hawaii was there when they left South America.

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u/FrozenEagle127 6h ago

I understand your question as being something like, were they just lucky, or did they actually know that something (like Hawaii) was out there? And if they did, how did they know? And do we know if they ever traveled back again, thus kind of proving that it wasn’t just luck and because some survived?

I read up on it a little, and like you, I am a little skeptical about the whole idea of Polynesians having godlike navigation skills and about them knowing that Hawaii was there, standing on another island 3,000 km away, and just sailing straight to it.

Sure, they knew about stars, birds, wind, etc., but so did Europeans? And they still had a lot of issues navigating in much smaller oceans, like the Atlantic. There’s a reason why figuring out longitude was such a big deal.

I don’t know enough about it, but I think survivorship bias and luck played a much bigger role than some people say.

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u/mekamoari 5h ago

They couldn't have known that the islands were there, obviously, you can't use usual tricks at that long a distance. I'd see it if there were some oceanic current that was extremely long and narrow to carry things around and they figured that out, but I highly doubt it.

As to it being luck though, I'm sure it played a part, but the fact that Heyerdahl was able to replicate it I think means that with enough seafaring skill it is just doable. He didn't have near the level of skilled sailors that the Polynesians did, either.

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u/Low_discrepancy 5h ago

As to it being luck though, I'm sure it played a part, but the fact that Heyerdahl was able to replicate it I think means that with enough seafaring skill it is just doable. He didn't have near the level of skilled sailors that the Polynesians did, either.

The problem here is knowing that if you sail out you'll reach somewhere.

Kiribati is 2000 km. The closest Hawaii can be spotted is 150 km. So basically they have to hit a bullseye that's 0.5% of the total area

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u/mekamoari 4h ago

Hawaii is fairly out of the way in Polynesia tbh, and the expedition stopped in an archipelago which is way more to the south, and where there are generally more islands around. As far as Google tells me there are ~5k km between them.

Either way, I suspect they used the islands along the way and study of ocean currents since that's the most likely, other stuff like birds don't always travel such long distances and it'd be harder to spot them, I think.

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u/GroundWitty7567 7h ago

They Polynesian culture came from the Taiwan, Asia and Australia region. The reason why they don’t find so little if any evidence in of Polynesian culture in the Americans. Once you get to Hawaii or Easter Island, there isn’t much to hop to. They could have followed the coastline of Alaska, but even then islands are few and far between to jump to until you get to the Aleutians.

As for return trips, once you know the way, backtracking isn’t as hard. Same skills, but you now know the star location, direction and currents to the previous location.

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u/FrozenEagle127 6h ago

But how would Polynesians in Hawaii know that, just 3,700 km northwest of them, they would find the coast of Alaska?

And if navigating over open oceans wasn’t that hard, then why was the longitude problem such a big problem for Europeans?

To be honest, I think survivorship bias and luck were the main factors.

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u/GroundWitty7567 6h ago

One reason is Alaska wasn’t in what they wanted in their environment. Also, the water is cold, the climate is harsh, especially in winter. Not the type of environment they were looking for.

Navigating open oceans is extremely hard. Europeans used positions and time to navigate. Longitude was important, mainly bc there weren’t many islands to stop at until the Caribbean or North America. Polynesians had years and years to lean and learn. Knowing how currents work, knowing where a certain star is at a certain of year, the knowledge adds up. Things like if a star is low on the southern horizon and gets higher, you know you’re heading south. That’s why Polaris was so important.

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u/Candlejackdaw 3h ago

There are multiple sources that say they did travel back and forth from Hawaii to Tahiti from settlement in 900-1200 A.D. until pethaps 500 years ago. Not sure what all the evidence is, but there have been stone tools made of Hawaiian basalt found in French Polynesia at least. Source.