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On Nov 7, 2004, at 7:42 PM, Alexandre Eremenko wrote:

> On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Dr. Geoffrey Kolbe wrote:
>> Voyagers like the Polynesians,
>> for example, who roamed the Pacific seas with
>> "no sextant, no watch, no
>> almanac, nothing",
>
> I suppose they also did not have compass, so DR
> was not available to them, and they had to rely
> on CelNav entirely. So I would be interested to know
> more details on how exactly they did it.
>
> It is easy to imagine for me how they determine latitude.
> What is really hard to imagine, that they could determine
> longitude by their Cel Nav methods, even roughly.
>

There are a few threads in the archives on Polynesian navigation, with
some links to nice sites about that.  There was a famous voyager who
passed away about 1 year ago, who first coaxed Micronesians into
telling how they navigated.  Perhaps somebody else will fill in more
details.

Regarding longitude, the Micronesians were very aware of various
features of the sea at different locations, such as the Sargassos Sea
(yes, I realize that is in the Atlantic, I am using it as an example of
a feature in a supposedly featureless place).

Fred

   

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