Transport & space · c. 1000

Polynesian wayfinding

Navigators read stars, swells and birds to find specks of land across thousands of km.

Without instruments, Polynesian navigators used star compasses, ocean swell patterns and wildlife to steer double-hulled voyaging canoes. By about 1250 they had settled Hawaii, Rapa Nui and New Zealand, the last major landmasses reached by humans. The 1976 Hokule'a voyage to Tahiti proved the methods work.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Outrigger canoe 1500 BCE
Sailing ships 3500 BCE

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

World population over a million years Latest: 6.27k million people (2000) Source: DeLong 1998, table 'Total World Population' (Kremer series); Kremer 1993, Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990, QJE 108(3)