November 15, 2009
Hawaiians may have settled New Zealand
Study of Polynesian canoe designs indicates they made the 4,400-mile voyage south
By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Staff Writer
Study of Polynesian canoe designs indicates they made the 4,400-mile voyage south
By Christie Wilson
Advertiser Staff Writer
A new study of Polynesian canoe designs suggests that New Zealand may have been settled by sea-faring Hawaiians.
The idea that ancient Hawaiians could have made the 4,400-mile journey south shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with recent travels bymodern-day voyagers using traditional navigation methods, according tolead researcher Deborah Rogers of Stanford University's BiologyDepartment.
"These guys were incredible navigators and naturalists. They could tell when they were approaching a group of islands 100 miles out, maybe evenmore," she said.
In fact, members of the Polynesian Voyaging Society took the double-hulled sailing canoe Hokule'a from Hawai'i to New Zealand during a two-yearexpedition in the 1980s.
Crew member Ben Finney, who pioneered the reconstruction and sailing of Polynesian voyaging canoes, said that because of the long distancesinvolved, the trip was made with extraordinary planning and preparation.
"It's possible but not in one shot. We had to sail very carefully by different legs, and each leg had to be timed by season to get theappropriate winds," said Finney, an anthropology professor emeritus atthe University of Hawai'i.
New Zealand, or Aotearoa, was the last Polynesian island group to be settled, and it's not clear who got there first.
Various theories, including a direct Hawai'i link based on similarities in language, mythology and oral history and genealogies , have beenpromoted and dismissed over the past century. Most experts now believeNew Zealand was colonized from the Cook or Society Islands around 1000A.D.
Rogers said her study had two purposes, the first being to see if cultural data can be used to reconstruct population histories, just as genetic data isused in a similar manner. She said the approach could be successfulonly if using cultures, such as the Pacific island groups, that areisolated enough to maintain core traditions despite a certain degree ofcultural exchange with neighboring societies.
The second purpose of the study was to see if the cultural data — in this case, traditional canoe designs — could reveal a settlement sequencefor Polynesia.
Researchers gathered data on functional and symbolic canoe design characteristics for 11 island groups from the authoritative "Canoes of Oceania" by A.C.Haddon and James Hornell, which was published in three volumes from1936 to 1938.
A data matrix noting the presence or absence of nearly 140 design traits was created for each island group, Rogers said. The traits includedwhether vessels were adorned with geometric or human figure carvings,plants, feathers or shells; whether hull seams were caulked or joinedtogether by sennit; and whether the booms (" 'iako" in Hawaiian)attached directly to the float ("ama").
The researchers also developed new techniques to assess how much distances between the islands affected the likelihood of cultural exchanges, shesaid.
A series of analyses done without regard for existing knowledge of Polynesian migration produced results that, for the most part, were consistentwith current thinking on the subject, with a few surprises.
Fiji, at the western edge of Polynesia, is generally accepted as the jumping-off point for settlement of the islands to the east. (The firstpeople of Fiji were from Melanesia.)
According to Rogers, the new research suggested colonization spread from Fiji to the nearest islands — Tonga and Sämoa — followed by the Marquesas, theTuamotus and the Society Islands, which include Tahiti. The study alsoindicated that voyagers from both the Society Islands and the Tuamotusmay have sailed to Hawai'i. (The migration to Hawai'i is believed tohave occurred around 400 A.D.)
"It's well-accepted that Hawai'i was settled from the Societies but not so much from the Tuamotus," Rogers said.
She noted the low-lying Tuamotu atolls were populated by master mariners familiar with open-ocean voyaging, making it plausible they could havesailed north to Hawai'i. "They were really getting around and theircanoe designs were prized by other groups," Rogers said.
The study also found "a really strong connection" between Hawai'i and New Zealand, "but, of course, it doesn't prove it happened that way," shesaid.
Finney, an anthropologist, was hesitant to comment on the findings, since the study is based on highly technical methods familiar to biologists.
"Many people have tried to use canoe traits to trace migration and so far it has been a resounding failure," he said. "I have no idea whether thisis a better method. The main conclusion suggested, that ofHawai'i-to-Aotearoa settlement, seems odd in the light of otherevidence Either it tells us something we have not noticed, or themethod is inappropriate."
Rogers' research partners are Marcus Feldman and Paul Ehrlich. Their study, "Inferring population histories using cultural data," appears in theNov. 7 journal of Proceedings of the Royal Society B: BiologicalSciences.
Comments
And oddly enough, there is no talk of what type of research was done and based on what, where it came out, etc. Why do they continually ignore oral traditions, I will never understand in this day and age. They're really ignorant if you ask me.