Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometres of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly eve
Hōkūleʻa, a fibreglass-hulled replica of a Hawaiian double-hulled canoe sailing off Honolulu, 2009
Hawaiians sailing a double-hulled canoe, c. 1781
Marumaru Atua in Rarotonga, 2010.
Māori oral histories recount how their ancestors sailed from their homeland to New Zealand in ocean-going canoes. Some of these traditions name a homeland called Hawaiki. The canoes were probably twin
Polynesian navigation
…Fautasi Māori migration canoes Kawaharada, Dennis. "Wayfinding: Modern Methods and Techniques of Non-Instrument Navigation, Based on Pacific Traditions". Wayfinding Strategies and…
Departure of the Six Canoes from Raratonga for New Zealand, AD1350, a 1906 painting by Kennett Watkins depicting the imagined Great Fleet leaving Rarotonga in 1350