Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- 1 An introduction to the Pacific and the theory of its settlement
- 2 Pleistocene voyaging and the settlement of Greater Australia and its Near Oceanic neighbours
- 3 Issues in Lapita studies and the background to Oceanic colonisation
- 4 Against, across and down the wind: a case for the systematic exploration of the remote Pacific
- 5 The colonisation of Eastern Melanesia, West Polynesia and Central East Polynesia
- 6 The colonisation of Hawaii, New Zealand and their neighbours
- 7 Issues in the colonisation of Micronesia
- 8 Voyaging by computer: experiments in the exploration of the remote Pacific Ocean
- 9 Voyaging after colonisation and the study of culture change
- 10 The rediscovery of Pacific exploration
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
6 - The colonisation of Hawaii, New Zealand and their neighbours
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- 1 An introduction to the Pacific and the theory of its settlement
- 2 Pleistocene voyaging and the settlement of Greater Australia and its Near Oceanic neighbours
- 3 Issues in Lapita studies and the background to Oceanic colonisation
- 4 Against, across and down the wind: a case for the systematic exploration of the remote Pacific
- 5 The colonisation of Eastern Melanesia, West Polynesia and Central East Polynesia
- 6 The colonisation of Hawaii, New Zealand and their neighbours
- 7 Issues in the colonisation of Micronesia
- 8 Voyaging by computer: experiments in the exploration of the remote Pacific Ocean
- 9 Voyaging after colonisation and the study of culture change
- 10 The rediscovery of Pacific exploration
- Bibliography
- Index
- Plate section
Summary
Long voyages were made at some risk, but evidently not successfully until there was sufficient experience, knowledge and skill. The logic of survival suggests that successful voyages across and down the wind were made after upwind ones and the radiocarbon dates apparently confirm this. Voyages beyond the tropics, especially those downwind in high latitudes, were made last of all. Islands both hard to reach and return from can be expected to have been settled late and to show the influence of remoteness in their subsequent histories.
SOME NAVIGATIONAL ISSUES IN LONG-DISTANCE EXPLORATION
It is important to be clear about the factors that made for delay. As Lewis explains (1972:223):
Navigational accuracy is not a function of the length of voyage (if anything the longer passages providing the greater opportunity for random sea effects and judgement errors to cancel out). Thus if a 15° arc of accuracy, for example, can be attained over 300 miles, it is just as navigationally feasible over 1000. The special problems of the longer journey concern such factors as food supply, manpower, motivation, and the strength of the vessel – not navigation.
Lewis (1972:158) says of modern Micronesian voyaging that the longer voyages are regarded as tests of endurance rather than especially difficult navigational exercises, a point also made by Gladwin (1970:61). In fact, Lewis says that the length of a voyage is regarded as less important than the size of the target-island screen. Making a landfall was the vital thing in exploration, even if this was only back at the point of departure.
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- The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific , pp. 101 - 116Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1992