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The positions of the stars helped guide Polynesian voyages. Stars, as opposed to planets, hold fixed celestial positions year-round, changing only their rising time with the seasons. Each star has a specific declination, and can give a bearing for navigation as it rises or sets. Polynesian voyagers would set a heading by a star near the horizon ...
They proposed that an initial admixture event between indigenous South Americans and Polynesians occurred in eastern Polynesia between 1150 and 1230 CE, with later admixture in Easter Island around 1380 CE, [6] but suggested other possible contact scenarios—for example, Polynesian voyages to South America followed by Polynesian people's ...
Heyerdahl also did not believe in the western origins of Polynesians, whom he believed were too primitive to sail against the wind and currents. [ 1 ] [ 3 ] Archaeological, linguistic, cultural, and genetic evidence supports a western origin for Polynesians, from Island Southeast Asia , using sophisticated multihull sailing technologies and ...
The fact that some Polynesians possessed the South American sweet potato implies that they may have reached the Americas or, conversely, that people from the Americas may have reached Polynesia. Thor Heyerdahl 's Kon-Tiki expedition successfully demonstrated that the trip from the Americas to Polynesia using only materials and technology ...
A secondary project goal was to have the canoe and voyage "serve as vehicles for the cultural revitalization of Hawaiians and other Polynesians." [14] Between the 1976 voyage and 2009, Hōkūle‘a completed nine additional voyages to Micronesia, Polynesia, Japan, Canada and the mainland United States, all using ancient wayfinding techniques of ...
Before his death in 1779, Cook hypothesized that Polynesians shared common ancestry; he even pinned their origin to Asia. However, Cook's theory did not prevent debate among scholars. Before the Hōkūleʻa voyage in 1976, academic debate about the settlement of Polynesia was divided between several schools of thought. [54]
The mainstream view of the Polynesian settlement of New Zealand and the Chatham Islands as representing the end-point of a long chain of island-hopping voyages in the South Pacific. Since the early 1900s it has been accepted by archaeologists and anthropologists that Polynesians (who became the Māori ) were the first ethnic group to settle in ...
In this region, a distinctive Polynesian culture developed. Within the next few centuries Polynesians reached Hawaii, New Zealand, Easter Island and possibly South America. Polynesian navigators used a range of tools and methods, including observation of birds, star navigation, and use of waves and swells to detect nearby land. Songs ...