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Thread: The Remarkable Ancient Navigation System of the Marshall Islands

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    The Remarkable Ancient Navigation System of the Marshall Islands




    People were navigating long distances between islands in the Pacific for at least 2,000 years. How did they do it without astrolabes, sextants or modern satellite positioning technology? One group, the Marshall islanders, used unique stick charts and closely read the sea and its swells and currents for clues about where the islands were.

    Distances between islands in the Marshalls and the rest of Polynesia stretch for hundreds and thousands of miles in the vast expanse of the Pacific. People lived there long before modern navigation implements came along, but for hundreds of years the Marshallese had their own effective technology.

    It turns out Marshall Islanders of the Pacific Ocean and Polynesia used a couple of techniques. For one, they used rebbelib, charts made of sticks to show the currents and wind patterns and cowrie shells to show the location of the islands. They also used (and still use) a technique called wave-piloting or di lep
    .
    A brief article about rebbelib on Popular Mechanics says Marshall Islanders used the charts for centuries but adds they are not meant solely as visual maps because they’re not to scale. It would be difficult for someone unfamiliar with rebbelib to use them. “The bamboo sticks that make up the frame also represent ocean currents and wind patterns, which Marshallese sailors use as navigation guides,” the article says.


    A large rebbelib in a German museum



    Wave-piloting to navigate the ocean involves seafarers finding their way between islands by the direction and shape of swells. Wave pilots know how swells are influenced by coming into contact with the islands. It is hard to do and very few people do it anymore.

    As Westerners came to the islands over the years and disseminated modern navigation techniques, wave-piloting began to die out and was just used around the island of Rongelap to the north. In 1954, the United States bombed nearby Bikini Atoll with nukes, poisoning nearby Rongelap. The art of di lep , as practiced by ri-metos, or “persons of the sea,” was nearly lost but for the fortunate training of one man, now older, when he was a youth.

    During a research expedition with anthropologist Joseph Genz, who was studying wave piloting, Joel took Genz sailing in yachts in the Pacific Ocean around the Marshalls. At one point in the voyage, Joel told Genz and Kelen that they were experiencing di lep , but neither of the other two men could feel it. Oceanographers from the University of Hawaii could not detect it with their equipment either.

    Stick charts weren’t used by all sailors of the Marshall Islands. A select few learned the art and passed it from father to son. When fleets of canoes went voyaging between the islands, the lead canoe would have a ri-meto, who navigated for the entire group.

    The people of the Marshall Islands had two other types of stick charts— mattang charts used for teaching navigation, and meddo charts that are smaller than rebbelib and don’t include all the islands of the chain.

    These charts recognized four types of swells that came in contact with islands’ undersea slopes and that changed as they interacted with swells for differing directions.



    Source: http://www.ancient-origins.net/artif...382?page=0%2C1


    peace...

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    No

    They navigated by the stars and wave watching and landmarks because it was not a exact science especially by inexperience pilots

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    There are books on this topic which show and teach how the ancients did this mostly Pacific but they still practice this art but even the most traditional guys still navigating by the stars take a compass now just in case . The native people built a traditional boats and navagated to America in a small fleet . However they had a modern sailing vessel always over the horizon following them as a emergency back up just in case it was not used but it was there just in case

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    With some peoples, the map/s were carved into the prow or front, star map/s also and yes they could read the swells/waves/sea extremely well also.

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    The Hawaiians and Polynesians and Maori say they followed migrating birds by day and that they took off for Alaska with the birds and during the night the birds roosted on the boats and during the day the birds guided them right to their destination. No need for even so much as a compass or storm watchers because the birds took them around storms too so they just stayed in sight of the flock all the time! Easy peezy as they say! When I lived in Dillingham, Alaska the Inuit tribe from there tells similar tales of following migrating birds too and from and they were not the least bit intimidated by the long wavy hair of Kiwa. And Kiwa brought his people to a new home'

    Kiwa sailed out of the east to explore the water under the star of Rehua. He looked on the vastness of the surging ocean and his heart responded to the restless spirit of Tangaroa. And he voyaged towards the setting sun where the lands beyond the horizon whispered his name.

    We are Uru Kehu and Kiwa was out first Pae Arahi, our greatTrail Maker.

    Song of Waitaha - The Histories of A Nation

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