[HN Gopher] The extraordinary story of two Pacific voyages of di...
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       The extraordinary story of two Pacific voyages of discovery a 1000
       years apart
        
       Author : pseudolus
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2021-06-01 19:57 UTC (2 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.thenewatlantis.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.thenewatlantis.com)
        
       | miobrien wrote:
       | Fascinating read. Thanks for sharing.
       | 
       | Great quote: "Once in a while you find yourself in an odd
       | situation. You get into it by degrees and in the most natural way
       | but, when you are right in the midst of it, you are suddenly
       | astonished and ask yourself how in the world it all came about."
       | 
       | Also, I like this journal's web design. Very well done for
       | mobile.
        
       | commachika wrote:
       | If you support masks, lockdowns or Fauci YOU should be executed
       | too.
       | 
       | FUCKING FASCIST FUCKS!
        
       | alleycat5000 wrote:
       | I enjoyed reading Sea People: The Puzzle of Polynesia which is
       | all about how Polynesia became populated.
       | 
       | https://www.amazon.com/Sea-People-Polynesia-Christina-Thomps...
        
       | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
       | I remember reading _Kon-Tiki and I_ , when I was a kid.
       | 
       | I think the journey (which was remarkable) was pretty much
       | written off, in those days as "a bunch of proto-hippies, doing
       | something," but these days, it would be a viral sensation.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | first-person slang like "hippies" is most often spoken by those
         | are "are not" and is derogatory IMO
         | 
         | citation: photo-journalistic Life Magazine cover article on San
         | Francisco culture used the word Hippy and introduced it to the
         | mass media (edit: could have been Look Magazine also, one of
         | those two).. people directly involved at the time did not use
         | that word. The word was further popularized primarily by
         | antagonists in media and popular songs
        
           | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
           | Well, one of my older siblings was one. Sort of still is.
           | They never called themselves that.
           | 
           | Fascinating person. We don't always see eye-to-eye on
           | everything, but I have learned a great deal from them.
        
       | joelcollinsdc wrote:
       | Modern editions of the Kon-Tiki expedition have a preface that
       | says the assertions in the book have been shown to not be
       | accurate, or something along those lines.
       | https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science-dna-shows-how-tho...
        
         | ericol wrote:
         | This link is paywalled.
        
       | zfrag wrote:
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
       | 
       | KILL FAUCI!
        
       | throw0101a wrote:
       | I've always been really been impressed by the Polynesians being
       | able to navigate across vast distances, and to especially to find
       | tiny islands and atolls in the middle of basically nowhere.
       | 
       | When exploring new areas, I wonder what success rate (%) was for
       | folks going into the unknown and finding a bit of land to land
       | on.
       | 
       | I'm guessing that they survived by harvesting rain water from
       | squalls and by fishing?
       | 
       | As a possible comparison, some folks built a Viking ship as
       | authentically as possible, and then sailed it across the
       | Atlantic:
       | 
       | * https://www.youtube.com/c/DrakenHH/videos
        
         | choeger wrote:
         | The water supply is an interesting question indeed. To me it is
         | of similar importance as the question of navigation.
         | 
         | Even _if_ ancient proto-polynesians had a hunch that there was
         | land somewhere, they _must_ have known about the need of fresh
         | water. And on top of that they either did not want to ever go
         | home or they must have had an idea about how to log their
         | route. Fascinating stuff.
        
         | dbuder wrote:
         | I read on HN that they found islands over the horizon by
         | looking at patterns in the waves and navigated by memorizing
         | the position of stars. Yes to the harvesting of rain water.
        
           | AnimalMuppet wrote:
           | By wave patterns (the island would reflect waves, and they
           | could detect that in a canoe), by birds (land-based birds fly
           | back to the island in the evening), and by clouds (certain
           | cloud formations build up over land). Combine them all, and
           | they could know where islands were that they couldn't see.
           | The reflected wave thing worked even at night.
        
             | throw0101a wrote:
             | > Combine them all, and they could know where islands were
             | that they couldn't see.
             | 
             | I'm curious as to the range that these things could be
             | detected. No doubt there's some proportionality between
             | island size and distance-detectability.
             | 
             | But there are a whole bunch (small) islands in the middle
             | of a whole lot of nothing, so I'm curious to know how many
             | were found on purpose and how many by accident.
        
           | BitwiseFool wrote:
           | The Hawaiian islands in particular are so large that they
           | affect wind and cloud patterns for hundreds, sometimes
           | thousands of miles away. You can see this happening in this
           | satellite photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commo
           | ns/6/6b/Hawaje-N... Look at how the clouds and currents
           | change from the top right down to the bottom left.
        
       | smitty1e wrote:
       | Heyerdahl's efforts were rewarded with a modern upgrade =>
       | 
       | https://www.reddit.com/r/WarshipPorn/comments/ms9onr/hnoms_t...
        
       | sosborn wrote:
       | Hokule'a and Hikianalia are keeping the art alive:
       | 
       | http://www.hokulea.com/moananuiakea/
        
       | pge wrote:
       | Additional reading if you are interested in the topic of
       | polynesian navigation- We, The Navigators by David Lewis. Highly
       | recommended.
        
         | contingencies wrote:
         | Second vote. This book made me want to implement autonomous
         | celestial navigation: then I learned that's how ICBM's work. If
         | you get in to the area, see also JPS @
         | http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/ and the umpteen trillion sailing
         | channels on YouTube with people building or restoring boats on
         | a budget for lifetime voyaging.
        
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       (page generated 2021-06-03 23:02 UTC)