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00:00:03,510 --> 00:00:07,590
If you had no compass at all, and
certainly not a GPS, and not even a

2
00:00:07,590 --> 00:00:12,990
chart, could you navigate a small boat to
an island that's beyond the horizon and

3
00:00:12,990 --> 00:00:14,610
that you don't even have a heading for?

4
00:00:15,450 --> 00:00:16,680
The ancient Polynesians could.

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00:00:17,160 --> 00:00:20,310
At least those among them
trained in wayfinding could.

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00:00:20,940 --> 00:00:22,830
Or so we've been told.

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00:00:23,430 --> 00:00:26,970
Is this all truth, all
fiction, or a mixture?

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00:00:27,600 --> 00:00:32,040
And that's coming up
right now on Skeptoid.

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00:00:35,927 --> 00:00:36,027
You're

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00:00:38,257 --> 00:00:39,557
listening to Skeptoid.

11
00:00:39,667 --> 00:00:42,527
I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

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00:00:43,087 --> 00:00:47,497
Facts and Fiction of
Polynesian Navigation Part One.

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00:00:49,687 --> 00:00:55,347
This episode was sponsored by Frederic
Raña Skeptoid's Earl of Elixirs.

14
00:00:55,927 --> 00:01:03,197
To personally sponsor your own
episode, come to skeptoid.com/sponsor.

15
00:01:03,922 --> 00:01:08,452
Welcome to the show that separates fact
from fiction, science from pseudoscience,

16
00:01:08,512 --> 00:01:13,012
real history from fake history, and
helps us all make better life decisions

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00:01:13,012 --> 00:01:15,082
by knowing what's real and what's not.

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00:01:15,832 --> 00:01:19,432
Today I have the great pleasure of
presenting an episode on a topic

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00:01:19,642 --> 00:01:24,562
that has fascinated me for almost my
entire life, which is how the ancient

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00:01:24,562 --> 00:01:28,972
Polynesians were able to navigate their
way to islands that were either beyond

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00:01:28,972 --> 00:01:33,292
the horizon or that were completely
unknown as they were exploring

22
00:01:33,292 --> 00:01:34,882
where nobody had ever gone before.

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00:01:35,752 --> 00:01:37,222
Somehow they did it.

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00:01:37,612 --> 00:01:42,352
And moreover, maintained routes between
distant island groups for many centuries,

25
00:01:42,772 --> 00:01:45,352
all without any instruments at all.

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00:01:45,982 --> 00:01:50,122
And suspiciously, there's always
been a bit of a cloak of magic or

27
00:01:50,122 --> 00:01:51,892
a sixth sense over this subject.

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00:01:52,822 --> 00:01:56,982
So today we're gonna dive in, no
pun intended, and separate the

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00:01:57,052 --> 00:02:02,032
science from the sensationalism
surrounding Polynesian navigation.

30
00:02:03,712 --> 00:02:09,142
Traditionally, the term Polynesia refers
to a 10 million square mile region of

31
00:02:09,142 --> 00:02:13,642
the Pacific Ocean, bounded by Hawai'i
in the north, New Zealand in the

32
00:02:13,642 --> 00:02:16,252
Southwest, and Rapa Nui in the east.

33
00:02:17,122 --> 00:02:25,612
Beginning around 1000 BCE and completing
around 1250 CE, Polynesia was completely

34
00:02:25,612 --> 00:02:31,402
settled on every habitable island and
land mass by humans who represented

35
00:02:31,762 --> 00:02:36,802
hands down the very best skilled
navigators on the planet at the time,

36
00:02:37,432 --> 00:02:41,392
perhaps at any time, because they
did it all without instruments of any

37
00:02:41,392 --> 00:02:43,582
kind, not even a system of writing.

38
00:02:44,497 --> 00:02:49,237
They had only experience-driven
knowledge to go on, and as we'll discuss

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00:02:49,237 --> 00:02:51,997
today, this was not trivial to learn.

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00:02:52,477 --> 00:02:58,897
To navigate these vast distances safely,
required decades of training from elders.

41
00:03:00,817 --> 00:03:04,717
But for the past couple hundred years,
there has been little need for the

42
00:03:04,717 --> 00:03:08,557
traditional skills, and given how
difficult the skills were to develop,

43
00:03:09,007 --> 00:03:11,407
they'd become almost entirely lost.

44
00:03:11,992 --> 00:03:15,652
European authors had documented
what they did, but with only

45
00:03:15,652 --> 00:03:17,242
a certain level of accuracy.

46
00:03:17,572 --> 00:03:22,022
As far as actual Polynesians
who still possessed master-level

47
00:03:22,042 --> 00:03:26,212
wayfinding abilities, they had
become almost completely extinct

48
00:03:26,482 --> 00:03:27,982
by the middle of the 20th century.

49
00:03:28,492 --> 00:03:30,017
Not entirely, but nearly.

50
00:03:32,032 --> 00:03:34,762
This allowed mythology to fill the gap.

51
00:03:35,302 --> 00:03:40,502
Beliefs arose that the ancient Polynesians
had had some kind of sixth sense -- an

52
00:03:40,522 --> 00:03:44,002
almost magical ability -- things
like all they had to do was stick a

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00:03:44,002 --> 00:03:48,082
hand or a foot in the water and could
glean all the information they needed.

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00:03:48,802 --> 00:03:54,052
In part, this readiness to believe in
some kind of metaphysical superiority

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00:03:54,142 --> 00:03:58,912
of an ancient race had its roots in
the western esotericism movement,

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00:03:59,392 --> 00:04:03,352
which saw the rebirth of New Age
and a hunger in western cultures

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00:04:03,352 --> 00:04:06,022
for all things ancient and mystical.

58
00:04:06,802 --> 00:04:11,512
Within such a context, it seemed almost
a given that an ancient people would have

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00:04:11,512 --> 00:04:14,152
a superior connection to Mother Earth.

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00:04:14,662 --> 00:04:19,282
One that eluded the corrupted
materialistic westerners -- as the New

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00:04:19,282 --> 00:04:20,942
Agers of the day might have put it.

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00:04:22,742 --> 00:04:27,787
And so, the passage of time, and the
loss of the need for the skills, saw them

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00:04:27,787 --> 00:04:30,637
fade away among 20th-century Polynesians.

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00:04:31,057 --> 00:04:36,457
Regardless of whatever perceived elevated
skills the western/European culture

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00:04:36,457 --> 00:04:38,497
of the day wished to confer upon them.

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00:04:39,367 --> 00:04:43,417
However, there was at least one
aspect of traditional wayfinding that

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00:04:43,567 --> 00:04:46,117
survived this erosion of information.

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00:04:46,807 --> 00:04:50,147
It was a detail from the true
histories of wayfinders that,

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00:04:50,902 --> 00:04:55,642
probably due to its bawdy nature,
also resonated with Western readers.

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00:04:56,422 --> 00:05:02,542
Some refer to it as testicular navigation,
and it is exactly what it sounds like.

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00:05:02,902 --> 00:05:07,432
Navigators would hang off the side of
the canoe and drag their testicles in

72
00:05:07,432 --> 00:05:11,842
the water sensing temperature and wave
movement, or would sit on the bottom

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00:05:11,842 --> 00:05:15,902
of the canoe with their testicles in
direct contact with the boat's hull.

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00:05:16,402 --> 00:05:20,812
The idea being that testicles as
extraordinarily sensitive parts of the

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00:05:20,812 --> 00:05:26,032
anatomy were the best organs to use
to detect the subtlest of movements.

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00:05:27,847 --> 00:05:31,957
Testicular navigation first came to
the attention of Europeans with the

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00:05:31,957 --> 00:05:38,137
1972 publication of the book We, the
Navigators by Dr. David Lewis, who

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00:05:38,137 --> 00:05:42,607
spent two years sailing the Pacific
with two traditional navigators from

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00:05:42,607 --> 00:05:44,767
the Santa Cruz and Caroline Islands.

80
00:05:45,337 --> 00:05:48,262
He documented all their
techniques, including this one.

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00:05:49,262 --> 00:05:52,237
Although Lewis's book was popular
enough to bring the subjects to the

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00:05:52,237 --> 00:05:56,122
public's attention, it certainly
wasn't the first, and Lewis

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00:05:56,122 --> 00:05:58,582
extensively referenced earlier texts.

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00:05:59,032 --> 00:06:03,022
One of these was a book that also served
as the inspiration for the title We,

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00:06:03,022 --> 00:06:09,772
the Tikopia, A massive 1936 Chronicle
by anthropologist Sir Raymond Firth.

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00:06:11,272 --> 00:06:16,162
Ever since, testicular navigation is
found in virtually all modern writing

87
00:06:16,162 --> 00:06:21,382
on the subject; its presence today is
blatantly outsized and sensationalized.

88
00:06:22,042 --> 00:06:25,852
We do have documented evidence
that this was a real technique.

89
00:06:26,482 --> 00:06:30,742
However, it's not clear at all
that it was either widely used or

90
00:06:30,742 --> 00:06:32,362
even played a significant role.

91
00:06:32,932 --> 00:06:37,432
In fact, there's some debate on whatever
role it did have was merely an attempt

92
00:06:37,432 --> 00:06:39,352
to keep women out of the profession.

93
00:06:40,072 --> 00:06:41,602
If so, it was not successful.

94
00:06:41,902 --> 00:06:44,812
It's widely documented that
women were equally represented

95
00:06:44,812 --> 00:06:46,852
in the crews of voyaging canoes.

96
00:06:47,587 --> 00:06:51,037
Regardless, the technique does hint
toward one of the most important

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00:06:51,037 --> 00:06:56,017
skills needed in wayfinding: the
precise sensing of the directions and

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00:06:56,017 --> 00:06:58,897
magnitudes of multiple ocean swells.

99
00:06:59,587 --> 00:07:00,517
More on that later.

100
00:07:02,107 --> 00:07:06,897
There's another really interesting bit
of quasi-pseudoscience called te lapa.

101
00:07:07,627 --> 00:07:11,497
Te lapa means a flashing light,
and it's the one thing that some

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00:07:11,497 --> 00:07:15,577
wayfinders talk about, but that
modern science does not confirm.

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00:07:16,462 --> 00:07:21,052
The claim is that on some nights an
underwater ray of light will flash

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00:07:21,052 --> 00:07:26,242
out to sea from an island indicating
its direction, and some say this can

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00:07:26,242 --> 00:07:29,782
be visible up to 150 kilometers away.

106
00:07:30,472 --> 00:07:35,182
David Lewis, who did report seeing
such lights himself on rare occasions

107
00:07:35,542 --> 00:07:40,072
speculated -- and it was pure
speculation -- that perhaps the

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00:07:40,072 --> 00:07:44,842
light was created by bioluminescence
close to shore, focused into a beam

109
00:07:44,872 --> 00:07:50,242
by a sort of natural lens formed by
waves refracting around an island.

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00:07:51,307 --> 00:07:55,527
Some modern researchers have spent
considerable time searching for te

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00:07:55,527 --> 00:08:00,067
lapa and have always come up empty
handed, but even the staunchest of

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00:08:00,067 --> 00:08:04,897
its believers state that it's very
rare and as such could hardly be

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00:08:04,897 --> 00:08:07,057
considered a useful tool for navigating.

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00:08:07,897 --> 00:08:12,397
Regardless, it can't be said that
any replicable observation exists,

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00:08:12,907 --> 00:08:17,767
so any attempt at even hypothesizing
an explanation is premature.

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00:08:19,732 --> 00:08:22,702
The real problem with preserving
the unique knowledge base of

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00:08:22,702 --> 00:08:26,842
wayfinding was misinformation
that became far more popular.

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00:08:27,382 --> 00:08:31,192
The source of a lot of this
was Thor Heyerdahl, a darling

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00:08:31,192 --> 00:08:32,632
of National Geographic.

120
00:08:33,192 --> 00:08:38,662
Heyerdahl was a Norwegian botanist, and
while living in the Marquesas, developed

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00:08:38,662 --> 00:08:43,987
a pseudoscientific conjecture that the
South Pacific had been populated not

122
00:08:44,017 --> 00:08:49,567
eastward from Southeast Asia as we know
today, but westward from South America.

123
00:08:50,227 --> 00:08:54,517
He believed people from Peru made
rafts out of balsa wood and other

124
00:08:54,517 --> 00:08:58,567
native materials and floated
across the Pacific to populate it.

125
00:08:59,137 --> 00:09:04,177
Rafts driven west by the southeast trade
winds and the south equatorial current.

126
00:09:05,122 --> 00:09:09,532
To prove his notion was possible,
Heyerdahl made the voyage himself in

127
00:09:09,532 --> 00:09:14,932
such a raft, the Kon-Tiki, in a 1947
voyage that was widely publicized.

128
00:09:15,472 --> 00:09:20,182
He also did the same thing across the
Atlantic with the Ra and the Ra II to

129
00:09:20,182 --> 00:09:25,252
prove his other pseudoscientific belief
that Egyptians sailed across to South

130
00:09:25,252 --> 00:09:28,222
America to become its founding population.

131
00:09:29,032 --> 00:09:33,052
If Ancient Aliens had been on TV
in the mid 20th century,  Thor

132
00:09:33,052 --> 00:09:34,427
Heyerdahl would've been a regular.

133
00:09:36,562 --> 00:09:41,162
What National Geographic conveniently
glossed over was that in Heyerdahl's

134
00:09:41,162 --> 00:09:45,772
pseudohistory, these founding
populations were white-skinned,

135
00:09:45,862 --> 00:09:48,022
bearded, God-like characters.

136
00:09:48,682 --> 00:09:53,332
Only the whites were wise enough to
voyage from Egypt to South America, and

137
00:09:53,332 --> 00:09:57,417
only the whites were wise enough to sail
thenceforth westward across the Pacific.

138
00:09:58,427 --> 00:10:02,867
In Heyerdahl's day the skills of
wayfinding were already almost

139
00:10:02,867 --> 00:10:08,267
entirely lost, and seeing their lack of
ability, he reasoned that for Polynesia

140
00:10:08,267 --> 00:10:12,317
to have been populated, a higher
intelligence must have been responsible.

141
00:10:13,007 --> 00:10:18,087
So it all fit neatly together in his
mythology: the generally west-moving

142
00:10:18,087 --> 00:10:22,362
trade winds, his white supermen
from Egypt there to take advantage,

143
00:10:23,242 --> 00:10:28,352
and Heyerdahl's own semi-successful
experiments with the Ra and Kon-Tiki

144
00:10:28,372 --> 00:10:31,522
boats to convince him of his correctness.

145
00:10:33,502 --> 00:10:37,382
Luckily, before National Geographic
could persuade the world that Thor

146
00:10:37,382 --> 00:10:42,022
Heyerdahl was right and all the world's
anthropologists were wrong, a movement

147
00:10:42,022 --> 00:10:47,002
arose in the 1960s that came to be
known as the Hawaiian Renaissance, a

148
00:10:47,002 --> 00:10:51,832
period of reclaiming and celebrating the
Pacific Islander identity and culture.

149
00:10:52,627 --> 00:10:58,847
To mainland Americans, this manifested as
surging interest in hula dancing and luaus

150
00:10:58,867 --> 00:11:01,687
with leis and famous Hawaiian musicians.

151
00:11:02,407 --> 00:11:07,537
And while all this played out fine on The
Brady Bunch, much more serious aspects

152
00:11:07,537 --> 00:11:09,757
were brewing on the islands themselves.

153
00:11:10,387 --> 00:11:14,617
It was a time of political unrest and
even some violence of battles over

154
00:11:14,617 --> 00:11:18,607
land ownership and usage, and renewed
calls for Hawaiian independence.

155
00:11:20,167 --> 00:11:25,147
This Renaissance was one driver of
the 1973 formation of the Polynesian

156
00:11:25,177 --> 00:11:30,007
Voyaging Society, founded to
perpetuate the art and science of

157
00:11:30,007 --> 00:11:34,537
traditional Polynesian wayfinding and
to teach it to the next generation.

158
00:11:35,347 --> 00:11:40,957
In 1975, they launched Hōkūle'a, a
traditional double-hulled voyaging canoe.

159
00:11:41,707 --> 00:11:46,717
For safety, it was built with more durable
modern materials such as fiberglass -- in

160
00:11:46,717 --> 00:11:51,427
fact, it still sails today -- because
its primary purpose was to reintroduce

161
00:11:51,427 --> 00:11:56,857
traditional Polynesian navigation, and it
even now has a sister ship the Hikianalia.

162
00:11:57,667 --> 00:12:03,067
Toward this end, the society cast a wide
net over Polynesia and finally located

163
00:12:03,067 --> 00:12:07,987
one of the last surviving wayfinding
masters and made him the ship's navigator.

164
00:12:09,097 --> 00:12:12,797
He was the Micronesian
traditional Voyager Mau Piailug.

165
00:12:13,507 --> 00:12:18,517
Using no navigational equipment at all
except Mau's knowledge,  Hōkūle'a made

166
00:12:18,517 --> 00:12:25,057
its inaugural voyage from Hawai'i south to
Tahiti, an estimated 2,500 nautical miles

167
00:12:25,057 --> 00:12:28,777
traveled in 34 days, much of it upwind.

168
00:12:30,742 --> 00:12:34,792
The scientific impact of this voyage
shouldn't be understated because

169
00:12:34,792 --> 00:12:38,752
it brought us out of the era of
pseudoscience and pseudohistory about

170
00:12:38,752 --> 00:12:43,312
Polynesian wayfinding and Polynesian
history in general, and into an era

171
00:12:43,312 --> 00:12:47,152
where solid science explains and
confirms the real techniques that

172
00:12:47,152 --> 00:12:50,212
were used and can still be used today.

173
00:12:51,112 --> 00:12:56,077
Through our refreshed knowledge of these
techniques, thanks in large part to the

174
00:12:56,077 --> 00:13:00,757
Polynesian Voyage Society and  Mau Piailug
and many others like them throughout

175
00:13:00,757 --> 00:13:05,647
Polynesia, we now have yet one more
line of evidence supporting the known

176
00:13:05,647 --> 00:13:08,317
history of the peopling of Polynesia.

177
00:13:10,387 --> 00:13:15,307
Originally, I had no thought that this
might expand into a rare two-part episode,

178
00:13:15,517 --> 00:13:19,387
but once I got into the techniques of
wayfinding, I quickly saw that they would

179
00:13:19,387 --> 00:13:21,687
take up an entire episode by themselves.

180
00:13:22,197 --> 00:13:26,197
And really, they obviously deserve far
more than that, which would've left

181
00:13:26,287 --> 00:13:30,367
no room at all for discussion of the
pseudoscience or the historical context.

182
00:13:30,457 --> 00:13:33,547
And once I got into those, I
quickly saw the same thing.

183
00:13:33,577 --> 00:13:36,337
All that stuff is a
minimum of one full show.

184
00:13:36,997 --> 00:13:41,017
So that's what I gave you today,
which saves the best part for last.

185
00:13:41,797 --> 00:13:45,517
Next week in part two, we're
gonna talk about all the real

186
00:13:45,517 --> 00:13:47,647
tricks of the wayfinding trade.

187
00:13:48,247 --> 00:13:51,877
There are so many ways to obtain
knowledge about which way is the nearest

188
00:13:51,877 --> 00:13:56,677
island, where you're located, how far
you've come, and how far you have to go.

189
00:13:57,457 --> 00:14:02,227
It is a weird and wonderful science,
and taken altogether, it becomes

190
00:14:02,227 --> 00:14:06,457
completely unsurprising that the ancient
Polynesians were able to do what they did.

191
00:14:07,087 --> 00:14:11,257
They expanded throughout the ocean,
sailing off into directions nobody

192
00:14:11,257 --> 00:14:15,417
had ever gone before until they
filled every single habitable land

193
00:14:15,417 --> 00:14:18,487
mass, which was a bit of cruel irony.

194
00:14:18,997 --> 00:14:22,387
Accomplishing this feat
made the feat unnecessary.

195
00:14:23,227 --> 00:14:25,147
There was nowhere left to find.

196
00:14:27,337 --> 00:14:32,037
We continue with a look at an early
western advocate for the reality of

197
00:14:32,037 --> 00:14:36,592
te lapa and her experiences with it
and theories to explain it in the

198
00:14:36,592 --> 00:14:38,872
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I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.