Settlement of Polynesia and star navigation
Colonización de la Polinesia y navegación estelar
- Date
- c. 1000 BCE – 1250 CE · confidence medium
- Place
- Tonga and Samoa (origin of the Polynesian expansion)
- Credited to
- Lapita and Polynesian peoples
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Austronesian navigators settled the Polynesian triangle (Hawaii, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa) using double-hulled canoes and a navigation system based on stars, swells, birds and clouds. It is the greatest maritime exploration of prehistory.
Coordinates of Tonga, the starting point of the Polynesian phase; the expansion lasted more than two millennia. Discovery and Indigenous settlement of uninhabited islands, without a European equivalent until the 18th century.
What it led to
- Settlement of Hawaii (c. 1000 CE), Rapa Nui and New Zealand (c. 1250)
- Spread of the sweet potato between South America and Polynesia
- Revival of traditional navigation (Hōkūleʻa, 1976)
Built on
- Outrigger canoe and crab-claw sailc. 1500 BCE
- Lapita potteryc. 1350 BCE
- Double-hulled voyaging canoe (waka hourua, waʻa kaulua)c. 1000 BCE (muy aproximado)
- Austronesian expansion from Taiwan
- Lapita culture
Made possible
- Pre-Columbian sweet potato in Polynesiac. 1000
- Hawaiian fishponds (loko iʻa)c. 1400
- Moai of Rapa Nuic. 1250-1650
- Tupaia's chart of the Pacific islands1769
- Marshall Islands stick chartdocumentada desde 1862 (práctica anterior)
- Carolinian star compass and etaktradición milenaria; descrita en 1953-1972
- Hōkūleʻa voyage1976
- Double-hulled outrigger canoe
- Marshall Islands stick chart