These theories display the cultural bigotry and the lack of imagination that we’ve come to expect from early European explorers, as they take new information and force it to fit the prevailing paradigm, instead of changing the paradigm to accommodate new information. The later theories are particularly amusing because they attempt to be rational and scientific, while ignoring obvious facts. For example, waves in the Pacific are sometimes as big as two-story buildings, and the distance between Polynesian islands is vast—it’s over two thousand miles from Tahiti to Hawai’i. It would be difficult to manage a long voyage through inhospitable territory “by accident.” These “rational” theories likewise ignore how much water there is, and how little land. If you don’t know the signs that indicate the presence of a nearby island, you’ll almost certainly sail past without ever knowing it’s there, just over the horizon and out of sight. It’s improbable that Polynesian mariners would drift across the ocean from Tahiti and “just happen” to run into Hawai’i.
Simply put, nobody could buy into these “rational” theories without ignoring obvious facts (as the writers of Castaway did).
We, as fans of speculative fiction living in the twenty-first century, know better. We realize that paradigms must change to fit new facts. We realize that seemingly impossible situations have a scientific explanation. We also realize that just because something seems primitive or unfamiliar, it is not necessarily ineffective. I usually express this last point by paraphrasing one of the great maxims of science fiction: a technology sufficiently different from ours isn’t recognizable as technology.
And the technology employed by the Polynesians on their transoceanic voyages was certainly very different from that employed by the Europeans who first encountered them. While the Europeans depended on their instruments to show them the way across the ocean, the Polynesians depended on highly trained individuals with detailed knowledge of astronomy, oceanography, and marine biology as it applies to transoceanic navigation.
Thompson and the Polynesian Voyaging Society rediscovered these techniques during the Hokule’a project, largely through Thompson’s work with Mau Piailug, an elderly man from Satwal, Micronesia who was one of very few who still practiced the ancient methods of instrumentless navigation.
One of the most important tools at the navigator’s disposal, Thompson learned, is the star compass. The star compass is a mnemonic construct, which enables the navigator to deal with the tremendous amount of astronomical data he must keep in his head in order to find his way. It isn’t enough to know where the stars are supposed to be; the navigator can’t get his bearings by just looking up at the sky. Instead, he has to be able to identify the stars and watch where they rise and set every night. He must also have detailed knowledge of the pattern of the stars in the sky, so that when the night is overcast he can project the position of crucial stars, which are obscured by clouds based on the position of other stars, which are visible. Such crucial stars include the constellation Hanai-i-ka-malama, or the Southern Cross, which Thompson found is very important for determining latitude on the voyage between Tahiti and Hawai’i, and Hokule’a, or Arcturus, which indicates to the navigator that he is at the same latitude as Hawai’i when he sees it at the zenith.
The navigator also must keep track of the canoe’s speed and heading, and the passage of time. And he must do this without a speedometer, or a watch. The star compass helps make this mass of information manageable by dividing the sky into four quadrants named, in Hawaiian, for the four cardinal directions. Each quadrant contains seven directional points on the horizon, each of which is 11.25 degrees from the next. Each of these directional points marks the midpoint of a house of the same name, and each house is 11.25 degrees wide. As the stars travel through the sky, the navigator plots their course through his mnemonic star compass, and is able to derive the vessel’s current heading.
The star compass also helps the navigator read the flight path of seabirds, which, Thompson learned, is an important navigational tool. By watching for birds that sleep on land by night but fish in the ocean by day, such as the manu o ku, or white tern, the navigator can tell that an island is nearby. Other signs that point to the presence of an island include changes in the behavior of sea mammals, such as dolphins, and changes in the pattern of waves.
In order to keep track of all this data, a navigator was awake for twenty-one to twenty-two hours of every day. The rest of the crew did the physical labor on the ship, allowing the navigator to devote all of his efforts to the mental chore of compiling and analyzing environmental data. In a sense, the navigator is similar to the on-board computers used in modern vessels. Frank Herbert fans will also notice the obvious similarities between a Polynesian navigator and a Guild navigator, or even a mentat—except that the Polynesian navigator was just a human being, operating without the performance-enhancing benefits of spice. It’s clear that the Polynesians, despite the assertions of the early European explorers, were not primitive. In fact, they were among the most advanced civilizations of their time.
The historical details of the Polynesian migration across the Pacific are subject to much debate, and most of the facts are obscured by centuries of myth. It is clear that the Polynesians undertook ambitious voyages across the ocean and settled remote islands. It’s also clear that for a time there was travel and trade between these islands, since Hawaiian oral history and genealogy make frequent reference to travelers going to and from other island groups. Finally, it’s clear that for some reason these voyages came to an end, leaving the people of Polynesia isolated to evolve separately from each other.
Hawai’ian Social Structures and Customs
The Native Hawaiians evolved social structures that allowed them to cope with limited resources, and with living together in a relatively small space.
For instance, the Native Hawaiians were much more tolerant towards homosexuality before the arrival of Europeans. In his book Mo’olelo Hawai’i, David Malo writes that the chief Liloa, who ruled from Waipio on the Big Island and is the ancestor of Kamehameha I according to the oral genealogies, invented the practice. According to Malo’s account, the practice then spread throughout the population and remained prevalent until the time of Kamehameha I. Malo, of course, grew up under the influence of European Christian missionaries, and is not nearly as tolerant of the practice as his ancestors likely were.
As some writers have asserted, this tolerance toward homosexuality makes sense in an isolated, island environment. Simply put, people were a valuable resource and there were too few of them available. It didn’t make sense to discard some based solely on their sexual preference.
Another Hawaiian social adaptation was the practice of ho’oponopono, a kind of spiritual and sociological healing ceremony and method of conflict resolution. Detailed extensively in E. Victoria Shook’s book Ho’oponopono, the practice consisted of a family conference led by a senior family member or a respected outsider. The problem solving process could be complex, involving “prayer, statement of problem, discussion, confession of wrongdoing, restitution when necessary, forgiveness, and release” (Shook, 11).
The Native Hawaiian family, as Shook points out, is seen as a net of relationships. A dispute between two people involves not only them, but also the entire family “net.” Therefore, the goal of the ho’oponopono ceremony is to restore balance and good relationships to the entire extended family, not just between the two parties of a dispute. This process of conflict resolution is based on the concepts of interdependence and interrelatedness, which are essential to Native Hawaiian culture and which are driven by the island’s isolation. With the nearest land outside of Hawai’i being over two thousand miles away, and with no way of leaving once the period of the transoceanic voyages stopped, it was very important that everybody got along as much as possible.
Malo details another interesting practice, which was called ume. This practice, which Malo classes among sports and games played by the Native Hawaiians, is vaguely analogous to the modern swinger party. In the playing of ume, people would gather at night in an enclosure and sit in a circle. The leader of the game would walk around the circle, tapping, one after another, a man and a woman with a long wand. The man and woman thus tapped would go outside of the enclosure and “enjoy themselves together” (Malo, 214). In general, husbands and wives would return to each other the day after playing ume, with no anger or jealousy. Sometimes, however, husbands and wives would permanently transfer partners, having shifted their affection to the partner they found playing ume.
The only difference I can see between ume and the modern swinger party is that the ume players didn’t have a fishbowl of car keys.