Ancient Civilisations - Polynesian Exploration

Episode Date: February 13, 2026

Modern genetics tells us that the residents of the far-flung Polynesian islands are one of the most closely related people in the world. But, thanks to the exploration of their ancestors, they’re also the most widely dispersed. Polynesian exploration of the Pacific has been compared to humankind’s missions into space, and has led to a unique and vibrant culture for these islanders. So what do these people scattered across 1,000 islands have in common? How did the earliest pioneers survive epic journeys at sea? And what enables sailors to navigate such treacherous waters without any form of writing or physical map-making?  This is a Short History Of Polynesian Exploration. A Noiser production, written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to Dr Christina Thompson, editor of the Harvard Review, and author of the book Sea People, The Puzzle of Polynesia. For ad-free listening, exclusive content, and early access to new episodes across the Noiser network, join ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Noiser+⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Now available for Apple and Android users. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠noiser.com/subscriptions⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It is the 1st of May, 1976. A strange-looking vessel set sail from the harbour in Maui, the second largest island in Hawaii. It resembles a large catamaran with two red canoes joined by wooden beams and a covered platform where the crew of 20 people can rest, eat, and take shelter when of duty. High above their heads, two triangular canvas sails catch the breeze and the twin hulls sliced through the water like fins.

As the peaks of Hawaii shrink on the horizon, the crew settle down for a long and uncertain journey. A man called Mao Piailuk is in charge. He's not the captain, but the success of this voyage will depend on his skills. He comes from the island of Satawar, in the remote Caroline Archipelago. His father and grandfather was celebrated. sailors. From then he learned navigational techniques known as the talk of the sea. Now he faces his greatest test. Though Mao has no map, compass or coordinates, he knows the way.

Their destination is Tahiti in French Polynesia, an island 2,600 nautical miles south. They see nothing but ocean and clouds, but Mao sails on. Days turn to week. The crew catch fish and turtles for food. They tend to the needs of their cargo in the hull of one of the canoes, feeding their dog, pigs and chickens. And they open a large trunk to check their collection of plants. These seedlings are carefully wrapped in cloth to protect them from contamination by seawater. They need to arrive in good enough condition to establish fields of crops to feed a new colony.

The boat is called Hukulea, the Hawaiian name for the Zenith star of this region. By night, Mao uses the star as one signpost on a great celestial pathway. During the day, he reads the clouds and currents. As he charts their course, the crew adjusts the great sails, and they plunge deeper into the Pacific. Soon, Mao reaches unfamiliar celestial territory. His usual reference point, the North Star, isn't visible once they cross the equator. He hasn't been this far south before, and had to memorize Southern Hemisphere Star Courses before the trip. He can't control the elements either.

When the wind drops, the boat languishes in the doldrums for days. The crew passed the time by strumming tunes on a traditional ukulele. But Mao watches the sky with bloodshot eyes. A navigator cannot sleep for more than a few minutes, or the boat may go of course. At the first breath of wind, Mao gives a cry. The crew hoist the sails, the canvas bulges, and soon water is rushing beneath the canoes once again. On June 1st, one month after they left Hawaii, Mao is at the hell. As he shields his eyes against the glare of the sun, reflecting off the tranquil water,

something catches his eye. It's a bird flying towards the south. Knowing there's only one thing this can mean, Mao calls excitedly to the crew. He scans the horizon to confirm what he already knows. The bird must be heading home to roost after feeding out at sea. It means there is land in the distance. True enough, three days later, the Hookulea arrives in Tahiti. As the red hull slides into Papa Eta Harbour, the crew cannot be.

believe their eyes. News of their arrival has beaten them here. The shore is lined with people, the sea strewn with canoes, the trees so full of children that their branches bend down into the water. The governor of the island has declared a public holiday to celebrate the arrival of the Hookulea. Amid a carnival atmosphere, Mao is hailed a hero. For the first time, in maybe 600 years, a canoe has crossed the Pacific using no modern instruments, only traditional navigation. It has safely transported people, produce and livestock, just like the ancient ancestors centuries earlier. Some historians have claimed that it wasn't possible, so this is a cultural triumph, proof that there is truth behind the legends of epic sea journeys.

One small step for Mao Pi Ilug is one giant leap of pride. for the Polynesian people. Modern genetics tells us that the residents of the far-flung Polynesian islands are one of the most closely related people in the world, but also the most widely dispersed. Their ancestors explored the Pacific in ocean-going canoes, discovering new homes thousands of miles away. The feat has been compared to humankind's missions into space. Their isolation from the rest of the world meant the islanders developed a unique and vibrant culture. There are shared histories and practices between islands, but also diverse languages and legends. So what do these people scattered across 1,000 islands have in common?

How did the earliest pioneers survive epic journeys at sea? And what enables sailors without any form of writing or physical map-making to navigate such vast distances? I'm John Hopkins from Noiser this is Polynesian exploration. Modern maps are misleading. They are not drawn to scale. If they were, they wouldn't be much used to us. If the Pacific islands were depicted in proportion to the ocean, they'd be as tiny as atoms, invisible to the naked eye.

In reality, the Pacific spans half the circumference of the globe. All the Earth's landmasses could fit in it with room to spare. The first people to explore the continent, known as Oceania, arrive during an ice age that lowers sea levels enough to let them walk there, mostly on foot, with occasional short water crossings. No one knows what kind of boats the ancient people use, but 50,000 years ago, groups of humans colonize Australia and New Guinea. They are caught off again when land bridges sink beneath rising seas,

and they develop in isolation for millennia. Then, around 4,000 years ago, the first seafarers arrive. Unlike the indigenous peoples of Australia or New Guinea, they stick to the coast, rarely venturing far inland. A study of linguistics suggests that they originate in Taiwan, but move south over many generations, island hopping through the Philippines and Indonesia. By 1500 BC, they have settled widely in what is now called the Bismarck Islands. an archipelago above New Guinea, which itself lies off the northern coast of Australia. Dr. Christina Thompson is editor of the Harvard Review and author of the book, Sea People,

The Puzzle of Polynesia. We do see this continuity of culture, which is coastal. A lot of their food comes from the sea, so they are really good fisher people. They have pigs and they have chickens and they have dogs, all of whom are kind of happy to live on the coast, by the way. And they also travel on the sea, and they develop this technology which enables them, to travel farther and farther and farther on the sea, but they obviously have it because they're island hopping for some thousands of years. And it is true that they do seem to reside mainly on the outsides of islands. And in fact, often on islands off islands, which always struck me as kind of

interesting. So little islands off of a larger island, you see this in places like Vanuatu. Coastal island literal in the sense of L-I-T-O-R-L culture that they have, which they carry with them all the way along from Taiwan through the Philippines, through Indonesia, past Papua New Guinea and all the way out into the mid-Pacific. The people who settle the innermost Pacific Islands are described by historians as the Lipita. They spread quickly through several archipelagos. Starting from the Bismarck Islands of the northern coast of New Guinea, they travel east to

the Solomons, make a fairly short crossing to the Sander Cruz Islands, then head southeast to Vanuatu. Here, there is a fork in the journey. Some go further south to New Caledonia, and others continue east to Fiji. This whole region is collectively known as Melanesia. A few intrepid souls sail north to find the tiny Caroline and Marshall Islands, which today we call Micronesia. Others push east as far as Tonga and Samoa, the first island that lie in the geographical area now known as Polynesia. But the name Lepita would have meant nothing to these adventurous people. It's a modern description taken from one archaeological site where an important discovery

unlocked our understanding of how people came to be here. In New Caledonia, an island nation almost 1,000 miles east of mainland Australia, archaeologists have found a treasure trove of dark red pottery, mostly discarded in middens or rubbish mounds. The parts have intricate geometric patterns, complex designs of tiny imprints, sometimes on the inside as well as the outside of the vessel. This is called dentate stamping, usually performed with a simple tool such as a shell carved into a comb shape. The stamp is pressed into soft clay, leaving holes that are filled with coral lime. It creates delicate images of circles, zigzags, or eyes, an oval shape with a circle inside.

In a tropical climate that doesn't preserve much for archaeologists to discover, these broken shards give tantalizing clues to the lifestyle of people who lived here. When carbon dating technology arrives in the 1950s, historians can finally estimate how long Polynesia has been populated. Pottery, shells, and pieces of charcoal are found to, be as old as 3,000 years, dating the Lapita to the Iron Age. Except the Iron Age never came to this part of the world. The Lapita have no metal tools. Instead, they use the resources at hand, making fish hooks from bones, tools from obsidian and coral, and timber from palm trees.

There are no archaeological finds that predate this distinctive pottery, suggesting that the Lipita are the first people to inhabit these islands. The thing that identifies Lapida is this particular, very, very specific form of decoration on the pottery. When archaeologists kind of understood that there was this same pottery in Tongan Samoa, which you found all over Vanuatu, New Caledonia, over all the way west of the Bismarck Archipelago north of Papua New Guinea, all through that sort of region where this Lapida people complex had been identified nowhere else. in the Eastern Pacific, you're like, oh my goodness, that is a link. That is the link that tells us that

the people who made it all the way out to Hawaii and who we know came through Tongan Samoa because of all this other evidence we have, genetic, archaeological, linguistic, and so on, came from this Lapida area in the Western Pacific. It is difficult for archaeologists to put precise dates on settlements. It seems the inner islands are rapidly populated. Then there is a long pause. For maybe two millennia, from 1,000 BC through to 1,000 AD, the early Polynesians simply enjoy island life. But during the Middle Ages, something changes.

We don't know why, but around the year 1,100 AD, the Polynesians are once more on the move. There's an expansion out of the west, out of the intervisible islands of the Western Pacific, into the Samoa Tonga region, which is right on the western edge of the Polynesian triangle. And then from there, which is clearly kind of the homeland for Polynesia, it's where the oldest languages are seemingly. There is a pulse outward into, I think probably the middle of the Pacific, which is French Polynesia. And then there are these reaches out to Hawaii up in the north and Rapa Nui down to the southeast and again later finally back to New Zealand.

But that second pulse, it's not dated very conclusively. The region that we know is Polynesia, which is defined as the triangle from Hawaii in the north, New Zealand in the southwest, and Rapa. Apennui Easter Island in the southeast. That's a triangle of about 10 million square miles. And everybody inside that triangle, plus some people outside the triangle, kind of a small number, are what we call Polynesian. And they are all ancestors of these voyaging migrants. One of the many mysteries about Polynesian exploration is why people wanted to risk life and limb venturing into the remotest reaches of the ocean. With no written records, historians turn to oral histories, which offer a rich insight into their motivations.

There are lots of stories of a guy who steals his brother's wife and sails away with her. There are defeated people who then leave to find new land. And if your water supplies are destroyed or your coconuts are all broken, you have to go somewhere. But I think you sort of have to imagine what it's like to be people who have for thousands of years sailed from one island to another. moved from one island to another. You would know, you would believe, you would imagine that there was always another island,

that an island would rise from the sea, which is the way it's phrased, that an island would rise from the sea as you voyage toward it. I think must have been deep in the imagination of the people. Basically, one of the things you have to do to understand this story is you have to imagine a people who are at home on the sea. With seafaring at the heart of their culture, maritime technology is crucial.

The earliest Polynesians use single canoes fitted with an outrigger arm, a balance bar that helps to stabilize them in the water. This design originates in Southeast Asia and is still commonly seen in the protected seas of the Philippines. But these canoes are unstable. They would be overturned or inundated by large waves. To conquer the Pacific, Polynesians develop bigger and better boats, known as Wakaheura, ships made of two canoeses and lashed together with beams and a covered platform. Reminiscent of a modern catamaran, they can cope with rough seas. They also carry heavier loads, enough people, produce and animals to establish a colony on far-flung islands. This is the kind of craft recreated in 1976 by the experimental archaeologists who sail with the navigator Mao Piilu from Hawaii to Tahiti.

But back in an era before maps, and with no written records of previous voyages to draw on, how do pioneers even know which parts of the ocean to explore? It is possible that early Polynesians don't have a concept of the entire obstacle that is the Pacific. There is no word for it as a whole, although there is a rich vocabulary to describe aspects of the sea. For example, different words to detail the inner and outer edges of a coral reef, concepts that don't exist in English. The name Pacific comes much later when the Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan becomes the first European to reach the ocean in 1520. He arrives on an unusually calm day and names the Pacific after the peaceful conditions. He's not very accurate. The Pacific is

actually home to the strongest winds on the globe, but the name sticks. Of course, the Polynesians understand intimately the nature of their ocean. Crossing the heart of the Pacific, from the inhabited islands of the west to Hawaii in the far north, a sea voyage of over two and a half thousand miles. That's as treacherous as blasting off into space. There's a thesis about this, which is that people sailed out and back, out and back, out and back. And nobody really knows if this is true, but it seemed interesting. And part of the concept here is at first they sailed into the wind in their exploring. And then they came back.

And the reason you explore into the wind is because if you don't find anything, the wind brings you home. If you sail with the wind and you explore and you don't find anything, you die. You know, it's just that simple. So into the wind and back. And then eventually across the wind and back.

And that sort of actually maps pretty well onto what we understand to be the sequence of settlement, which is from the west to the east and then little by little to the north and to the south and then backwards. to New Zealand, which is the kind of the unusual piece of the whole story in a way. This is the last piece in the Polynesian puzzle. While many islanders thrive in coastal settlements, others must scratch a living on coral atolls,

where the soil isn't deep enough to plant so much as a cumerer or sweet potato. Life is precarious. And yet only a thousand miles south of the Lepita homelands by two hospitable islands known as Auteiroa, now more commonly known as New Zealand. Their nearest islands of Tonga and New Caledonia have been occupied since at least 500 BC, but people only reach the lush haven of Artaireoa around 1,300 AD, some 1800 years later. No one knows why it takes Polynesians so long to venture south.

One theory is that as communities moved away from the equatorial belt, they left behind diseases like malaria. Populations grew in size, strength, and desire to discover new homelands. Whatever the cause, New Zealand is the last port of call on the long migratory journey. Typically, people settle first on the coast, where they make good use of their seafaring skills. But they also learn new ways, feasting on resident seals and huge flightless land birds called moa, which are hunted to extinction in just over a century. As generations pass, people venture further inland, and relative isolation from the rest of Polynesia generates a distinct culture known as the Maori. But they still trace a common ancestry back to a mythical place known as Hawaii ki, a motherland

that perhaps has real origins in the islands of Raiyatea and Tahiti in French Polynesia. Rayyatea is still considered the spiritual heart of the Polynesian triangle. The concept of Hawaiiiki, as an original homeland, pervades many Polynesian languages, even if the pronunciation changes between peoples. The largest island in Samoa is called Savai. In the Makesa Islands, it becomes Hawaii. And of course, the origin myth gives its name to a collection of islands in the North Pacific that we call Hawaii.

But how did the Polynesians of the Middle Ages discover new homelands as far a field as Hawaii? Despite having no instruments, sailors are able to traverse thousands of miles of ocean and, crucially, return again. They use traditional methods such as reading the stars and swells, known as the talk of the sea. The Star Path is basically a series of rising stars at a particular spot on the horizon, and you know that you know that. horizon and you know those stars and you know roughly when they're going to rise and you just keep your eye on them and you head for them but you know the path you know which stars they are to get to where you want to go or they said we have this way of feeling the swells we know that there is a dominant say southwesternly swell that comes from the trade winds and we know that this is we're

going to always feel this it's like a drumbeat boom boom boom you know you're always going to feel this one but then across that you're going to feel something else and that will depend on maybe the local wind, what's going, where's it blowing in your area? Or if you're near an island, maybe you're getting something reflected back from the island. So there's all these different things, and they, through just generations of practice and personal experience, had an understanding of how to use these things. It tended to be a local understanding, but you could extrapolate it to other environments once you had some information. These same methods bring Polynesians to the island of Rapanui, where they discover a new home, a volcanic island with rich soil for crops.

They thrive and over the next 400 years carve a thousand huge stone statues known as Moai. What appear to be colossal heads are in fact entire humanoid bodies, with torsosos buried in the ground. It is thought the Moai contain the spirits of Rapanuian ancestors. The presence of carvings on other Polynesian islands gives a hint at the Rappanoian's migratory history. The stone heads of what European explorers later call Easter Island are the most famous monuments, but they're not unique in the Pacific. So you do see this kind of monumental stone sculpture, primarily in Rapanui, Easter Island, but also there are some in the Marquesas and other parts of French Polynesia.

This is like maybe the founding populations for Rapanui came from the... this region, the Tahiti Marquesans Tuamotu area. So there is monumental stone in Tonga. It's not carved in the same way, but there are big lithic structures. So I think it's all part of the same cultural complex. It reaches some sort of extreme in Rappanui, which nobody really knows the origin of. Nobody really knows why that happens. And so there is a tradition of stonework, pretty much throughout the Pacific. A recent study of DNA also found that modern Rappanouians carry a small percentage of genes from indigenous Americans, specifically people from Colombia and Ecuador, meaning there was

contact between the two communities during the Middle Ages. Historians think it most likely that Polynesians used their sophisticated seagoing abilities to visit continental America. Further evidence that the Polynesians reached the American mainland comes from a mundane sauce, a humble sweet potato. The Coomera plant is indigenous to the Americas, but it is found at archaeological sites all over Polynesia, and has been carbon dated as far back as 1,000 AD. That's long before the first Europeans arrive in the Pacific, and so shuts down the theory that it was introduced to Polynesia by sailors who'd traveled first through the Americas before reaching the Pacific. First contact between islanders and Europeans comes

in the late 16th century. There is a prevailing belief in Europe, dating back to antiquity, that there must exist a large, undiscovered continent somewhere in the southern hemisphere, a landmass equal to the weight of all the territory in the north. Otherwise, it was thought, the globe would be unbalanced and spin off its axis. There is such certainty about this concept that a mythical continent known as Terra Australis is commonly drawn on Renaissance. era maps. It becomes the Holy Grail for European adventurers. In 1567, a Spanish captain named Alvaro de Mandania sets off into the Pacific from Peru, with a crew of 150 sailors, priests, and slaves. Two months into the voyage, he first cites land, an atoll that is perhaps Nui in Tuvalu.

They sail on, and in February 1568, reached the Solomon Islands. Spanish accounts suggest that the first meeting is friendly until bartering causes hostility. What the islanders recall of the encounter is not recorded. What is known is that outsiders have a calamitous impact on the local population. One of the things that happens in some islands more than others is that the introduction of European diseases, diseases that are endemic in European populations, measles, smallpox, tuberculosis, flu, influenza, many, many other things, are very, very destructive in the Pacific. Marquesas is sort of an interesting case,

probably because it's one of the most extreme. There's an estimated maybe 50,000 population in the pre-contact era and all the islands in the group. And by the end of the 19th century, there are 2,000 Marquesans left. And so this is just destruction. You can assign blame or you cannot assign blame. It doesn't really matter.

The point is that this is what happened. With no written language in Polynesian cultures, what European visitors can offer is an eyewitness account of island life that adds to our historical knowledge. It is April 1722. A Dutch sea captain called Jacob Roggevain stands at the wheel of his square-rigged flagship, the rain lashing his face. With a crew of over 200, spread across three grand vessels,

he is exploring the Pacific, hoping to find the great southern continent. They have been at sea since the previous summer, having rounded the treacherous Cape Horn some months ago. But now, as he peers out towards the stormy horizon, he sights something, a low, sandy island. Hoping it might be an edge of the mythical landmass known as Terra Australis, he sails closer. They soon realize it is only an island, and a fairly small one at that, but lying 2,000 miles from its nearest neighbor, any land is a welcome sight. The crew spots smoke rising and realize it is inhabited. They decide to go ashore in search of refreshments in the form of greens, fruit and livestock.

As it is Easter Sunday, Rogovene names the volcanic outcrop Easter Island. He drops anchor in a sheltered bay and orders his men to take two shallops, small sailing boats aided by oars, closer to shore. They arm themselves with pistols and cutlasses and set off, even though the weather is heavy with rain and thunder. As they row closer, Rogovan notes that his first impression was mistaken.

The island is not sandy, but rather covered in parched brown grass, burnt vegetation, and arid earth. Easter Island is barren. As the sailors reached the shallows, people from the island row towards them in their own vessel. They are scantily dressed and with metal plates worn in their earlobes. Rogovene lets them bored, not least because their canoe looks poor and flimsy, hardly able to cope with the waves.

It is made of pieces of wood patched together with some kind of cork. Nothing like the magnificent local vessels seen elsewhere. Double-hulled Macau canoes fit to cross the ocean. These canoes are as forlorn as the island. Eventually the Dutchman deems it safe to go ashore, and their boats soon make landfall. Rogavain makes his way up the beach towards a man who appears to be the island leader. But then he hears a gunshot behind him and shouting, along with dozens more shots. The captain rushes back to see what caused the skirmish.

He finds around ten local men dead. One of his shipmates says an islander tried to grab the muzzle of his pistol, provoking the incident. But Rogaven is dismayed. It takes a long time to convince the local king that there will be no more violence. Eventually his people return to the beach with produce to barter. The Dutch buy 60 chickens and 30 bunches of bananas and pay with linen fabric. At last, everyone seems satisfied, and the king invites the visitors to explore the island, which is called Rapa Nui.

Rugevain is stunned to see huge, standing statues of giant faces carved in stone. He is delighted by the plentiful fruits and vegetables presented as gifts. But most of all, he is shocked by a lack of trees. There is nothing growing here, larger than fruit bushes. The entire island is denuded. It explains why their canoes are in such a parlous state. There is no way these people have enough wood to build. ocean-going boats. And if they don't have vessels, then they can't get off the island.

Rapa Nui may be an oasis for travelers in the vast Pacific, but its people are stranded. It is not known why Rapa Nui became deforested by 1722. The fossil records show that large trees must have existed once. So what happened to them? Some say that a growing human population used up the natural resources. Another explanation is that rats, introduced by migrants, ate all the nuts. Others reasoned that harsh weather on this exposed outcrop finned the soil until it couldn't support woodland. In any case, an eyewitness account in the journal of a passing Dutch sea captain shows how precarious life can be on these remote islands. During the 18th century, the region is a curiosity for Europeans, who are still

searching for that great southern continent that must surely exist to balance the the weight of the globe. Soon another foreigner arrives, Captain James Cook. He sets off from Plymouth in England in 1768 in a ship called the Endeavour. A year later he reaches remote and beautiful riotaire, the island known as the spiritual heart of Polynesia. Cook meets a local man named Tupaya. He is a star navigator, a polymath, and an artist, often described as a priest, he is a repository of knowledge about politics, medicine, mythology, and genealogy. He strikes up a friendship with an English crew member, a botanist named Joseph Banks, who spends four months in and around Tahiti writing detailed records of daily life.

They are much informed by Dupaya, from the cultural significance of tattoos, to the manufacture of fishing nets, to the correct preparation of breadfruit. Banks learns that dog meat is as tender as. lamb. Tahitians pluck their body hair, and it is taboo for men and women to eat together. Tupaya, via his friend Banks, also leaves an historically important account of the construction of Polynesian canoes. By 1769, Captain Cook is ready to continue his travels. To his surprise, Tupaya wants to join his crew. Cook explains that it may be a one-way journey, but Tupaya, like so many of his ancestors, needs to know what lies across

the sea. In June, they set off from Tahiti. Captain James Cook stands alone at the prow of the endeavor. Unbeknownst to his crew, Cook has a secret mission. He unfolds a letter that was given to him back in England. It is from the Admiralty, or Royal Navy, and sets out his instructions. Find Terra Australis, the Holy Grail for seafarers, and a prime target for colonizers who want to be the first to plant a flag in the great southland. Topaya steps up beside the captain, who puts the letter away. The Polynesian offers the Englishman a pot of macadamia nuts, and they crunch their snacks while contemplating the swell.

Topaya breaks the silence to say that an island called manure is located three days to the southeast. Cook nods, but keeps the ship heading south. A squall of rain splatters the sails, and the captain buttons his coat against the strengthening wind. The scene is repeated in the coming days. Tupaya points cooked towards interesting islands, but the Englishman stays on the southerly course, sticking to his secret mission.

Topaya holds his tongue. He has never heard stories about an island rising from the waters this far south. His people have been everywhere. If there was land, he would know. turn to weeks. The weather grows harsher. Their pigs and chickens start to die off in the cold. Dupaya stays below decks with his friend Banks. The botanist writes for hours in his journal. Soon, Cook seeks respite from the cold too. The captain pours over navigational maps, which prompts Dupaya to share a chant that navigators use to recall Polynesian islands in order.

Cook and banks are fascinated. Knowing that Tupaya is also an artist, they push across the table a clean sheet of paper and a pot of ink. Tupaya picks up the pen and dips the nib. He scratches a jagged circle right in the center of the page. Next, he draws a little galleon that resembles the endeavor, making the Englishman chuckle at his whimsy. Then he sets to work,

marking the surrounding islands moving out in concentric circles. They ink the names onto the map in tiny copperplate handwriting. While the endeavor plunges through icy seas, the men work on their unique map. When it is done, Cook and Topaya go up on deck to survey the ship's progress. Tupaya says nothing. His job is to find islands and there are none. Captain Cook watches the swell. Water rolls towards him, huge and steady, suggesting the ocean is unbroken by land. The captain knows he has failed in his secret mission.

He orders his crew to turn back to warmer waters. They will not find the great Southland on this voyage. In fact, Terra Australis won't be found on any voyage because it doesn't exist. There is land to the south in Antarctica, but it is covered with ice a mile thick. hardly the paradise envisioned by European adventurous. Arguably, Cook takes home something just as historically valuable, a copy of Tupaya's map. The botanist Joseph Banks secures it in his journals,

and it now resides in the British Library in London. Although island names are written in the Englishman's phonetic version of Tupyre's language, it is clear that the Polynesian was able to recall some 50 islands that would be recognizable today, many of which he'd never visited, but he carried a knowledge of their location in a mind map of the ocean. The document is a fusion of Polynesian

and European conceptualizations of navigation, one that could only have been made by those people with their experience at that moment in time, drifting in the southern ocean in search of a myth. The great navigator, Dupaya never does return home to Polynesia. He travels for a year with Cook, visiting New Zealand and Australia,

but dies of sickness in Indonesia in 1770. Cook lives to voyage another day and returns to the Pacific. But in 1779, on his third trip to Hawaii, local people steal one of his ships, and Cook attempts to take their king hostage in order to get it back. During the resulting fracas, Cook is stabbed and dies later of his injuries. Within decades, the trade winds bring to Polynesia more ships,

more visitors, more change, especially on islands where outside influence becomes entrenched. There are some really big differences from island to island. For example, in Tonga, everybody speaks Tongan. In New Zealand, Māori, the language there, has had a resurgence, but it was close to having disappeared. Hawaii, the same, very close to disappearing. Big resurgence now, a resurgence of teaching and learning and so forth. But really different effects, depending on the number of the number of the same. of outsiders, basically. Like in Tonga, the Tongans run the show. In Hawaii, the Hawaiians do not really run the show. So those power differentials and the numbers of outsiders relative to the numbers of islanders have a huge impact on sort of what happened afterwards and how much the

culture was transformed. In the 20th century, despite clear evidence of expert seafaring across the vast expanse of the Pacific, some historians question the ability to of Polynesian sailors. In the 1950s, a New Zealand academic called Andrew Sharp publishes a book in which he floats the castaway theory of colonization. He argues that it is not possible to navigate without modern equipment, so ancient Polynesians must have discovered new islands by chance, essentially getting lost and drifting to a safe haven, where they are forced to make a new life in order to survive. His theory extends a skeptical attitude that started with the first outsiders. For centuries, though European sailors marveled at

the distances traveled by Polynesian boats, they didn't look closely at how it was done. But evidence of the navigational expertise of ancient Polynesians comes from an unlikely source, an early computer modeling experiment. In 1964, the most powerful computer in the United Kingdom occupies two entire floors of a house owned by the University of London. As a test of its capabilities, it is set the task of modeling the statistical likelihood of a lost canoe discovering an unknown island while drifting in the vast Pacific, the castaway theory. The computer finds that a canoe might drift a short distance, for example from Tonga to Fiji, but the model also finds that there is no statistically viable likelihood of drifting to remote lands like Hawaii or New Zealand. and the chances of floating by accident to Rappanui or Easter Island is zero. And yet we know that Polynesian canoes did find their way.

So the 1964 computer modelling experiment suggests that other factors must be taken into account. Factors like highly skilled seamanship, an intimate knowledge of local conditions, wind and waves, currents and swells and the behavior of seabirds. Further evidence that the talk of the sea was preserved and past, down through generations is demonstrated by the navigator from the Caroline Islands Mao Pi-I-Lug. By directing the Hokulea from Hawaii to Tahiti in 1976, he proves that it is possible to chart a complex journey using traditional Polynesian methods without European instruments

like a map or compass. Polynesia is one of the most complicated regions in the world. It's people closely related but fragmented across a vast ocean. and yet the old ways survive through language and tradition. The scraps of land found in the Pacific are also survivors, the last peaks of the sunken supercontinent of Gondwana, cones of long-extinct volcanoes, coral atolls that took 30 million years to form. They are as remote as they are idyllic, seemingly almost as distant as stars in the sky.

But when their first inhabitants needed homes and hospitality, crossing the sea in their tiny canoes, these Polynesian islands rose from the waves to greet them. Next time we'll bring you the ancient Olympics. Once you've got an Olympic victory, you probably could have, if you wanted to, lived for the rest of your life on the kudos, the rewards that came from it. And we know that some of the sponsoring cities, basically extended the privileges of an Olympic victor to the victor's family that would extend possibly even beyond your lifetime. I think the Olympics is best described as agony and ecstasy

or paradise and hell on earth at the same time. That's next time.