NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Polynesian navigation
From: Wolfgang Köberer
Date: 2009 Jun 6, 16:54 +0200
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From: Wolfgang Köberer
Date: 2009 Jun 6, 16:54 +0200
Greg mentioned
that Dennis Fisher's "Latitude Hooks and Azimuth Rings" discusses the "Latitude
Hook" and JH ("Apache Runner") replied:
"The discussion in Latitude Hooks and Azimuth Rings is a bit sketchy and doesn't
reference a source directly. If there's a good primary reference, that would be
helpful."
Well, there
isn't; there can't be. It's just one of
those myths that have more lives than a cat. Same as the "Nautical school of
Prince Henry at Sagres".
None of the in-depth
studies of Polynesian navigation (Akerblom, Sharp, Lewis) discusses such an
instrument. And the last navigators that were still practising this "vanishing
art" (Ben Finney) did not give their counterparts (David Lewis: Hipour;
Steve Thomas: Mau Piailug) a single clue that they were using "latitude
hooks" or similar contraptions in their navigation. Even Ben Finney's navigator
Nainoa Thompson of Hokule'a fame used latitude methods only after he had taught
himself navigation reading astronomy books and taking an astronomy course
at his university.
Peter Fogg
(Navlist 8525) pointed out the reason for this :"Seems to me that they weren't
mechanically minded."
In other words:
latitude is no useful or even reasonable concept in traditional Polynesian
understanding of the world. But it hasn't been useful in Western civilization
for a long time either. Only in the Renaissance did measuring the stars
find a practical use. Portolan chart which had been around for at least 200
years only showed latitude scales after 1500.
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