While the diagram looks like a bunch of hen scratching, it really meant something to Polynesian navigators. It is similar to the piece hanging on the wall of the church I spoke about in an earlier blog. The Polynesians had no written language; therefore they could not publish maps or books of seafaring routes. A written language was not produced until Christian missionaries came deciding the natives were not living the good life. The particular church we spotted this in was Congregational whose first missionaries, in 1820, sailed from New England, then around the tip of South America, and then came to Hawaii to Christianise the islands and build this building.
I wanted to know a bit more about the old ways of navigating the ocean among the tiny dots of islands that rose in the Pacific. It seems to me they could easily be missed. Here is what I found in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia: "Polynesian navigation is a system of navigation used by Polynesians to make long voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean. Navigators travel to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice, often in the form of song in order to locate directions at various times of the day and year. Polynesian navigators memorize important facts: the motion of specific stars and where they would rise and set on the horizon of the ocean; weather and seasons of travel; wildlife species which gather at particular positions; the direction, size and speed of ocean waves; colors of the sea and sky, especially how clouds would cluster at the locations of some islands; and angles for approaching harbors."
I wanted to know a bit more about the old ways of navigating the ocean among the tiny dots of islands that rose in the Pacific. It seems to me they could easily be missed. Here is what I found in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia: "Polynesian navigation is a system of navigation used by Polynesians to make long voyages across thousands of miles of open ocean. Navigators travel to small inhabited islands using only their own senses and knowledge passed by oral tradition from navigator to apprentice, often in the form of song in order to locate directions at various times of the day and year. Polynesian navigators memorize important facts: the motion of specific stars and where they would rise and set on the horizon of the ocean; weather and seasons of travel; wildlife species which gather at particular positions; the direction, size and speed of ocean waves; colors of the sea and sky, especially how clouds would cluster at the locations of some islands; and angles for approaching harbors."
