Note: When talking about early dates, numbers and measurements, there is always going to be a degree of inaccuracy that we must account for – the numbers I present will not be completely accurate, and we are not even able to provide an accurate range in many cases. This far back in history is still an imprecise science. Hard numbers are more to give a general idea of the timeframe.

Note 2: I’m writing this in reference to this map of Polynesia and Oceania - https://imgur.com/yxZYpy6

Humans first reached the islands of the Pacific during the last ice age. Sea levels were much lower, and people were able to walk south through Indonesia as far as Borneo and Bali. From here, they were only left with swimming or paddling, but by around 38000 BCE humans were able to occupy Australia and New Guinea (at the time one continent). We don’t know anything more about these people, and it’s unlikely we ever will.

For the next 20,000 years, human progress only made it as far as the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands. Exploration didn’t pick up again until the arrival of a new type of people, thought to be from Southeast Asia, 4000 years ago. It is worth mentioning now that ‘exploration’ wasn’t what we think of today. Exploration for the sake of exploration is a relatively modern invention, these people were more likely to be searching for new land for other, social reasons – though it is difficult to discern exactly what these were. These new people were much closer to the type of seafarers we think of today. Their entire life was built around the water, with impressive canoes, an ocean diet, sails, and a complex language that included many of today’s seafaring terms. It is these people -known as the Lapita - who began to explore the islands of Polynesia.

In truth, the dates of the earliest settlement across easter Polynesia are highly ambiguous and are still being debated. Despite scientific advancements and a variety of methods such a radiocarbon dating, genetic analysis of rats, all I can accurately tell you is that all of Polynesia came to be occupied by humans between around 2000 BCE to 1500 CE, following a general west to east trend. We do, however, know much more about the methods used to travel.

Polynesians used many similar methods of travel to other seafarers – navigating by the stars, learning patterns of birds and fish, learning the current, etc – but the key difference was a prevailing wind known as a ‘trade wind’. Trade was taken to mean steady and reliable. This wind runs from the northwest to the southeast through Polynesia. The explorers would only set off when the wind deviated from its usual pattern. They would go east, confident that if they did not find an island to settle on, the normal winds would return, and would push them back to where they started. This lowered the risk of exploration and meant that generally, a journey would never be longer than six weeks.

The boats themselves, although small by modern standards, were up to the task of seafaring. They tended to be double-hulled canoes with a planked platform hoisted between the two hulls. It’s this design that allowed for this huge exploration to be possible.

The canoes used to settle the Pacific were thought to be between 15 and 27 meters in length. With a large deck spanning the gap between the two hulls, this provided ample room for the required goods and materials for ocean crossing and making a settlement, while also maintaining fast travel speeds. They carried large numbers of coconuts for hydration, as well as domesticated animals like pigs and chickens and other plants like bananas. There would also be a variety of ceramic tools and containers of fresh water. It’s also worth mentioning that these people were had a largely fish-based diet and were able to source food from the ocean while travelling. This size of the canoe, when remembering that journey times would almost never be more than six weeks, and most of the time less than three, meant that it was reasonably easy to provision with a safety net for a journey.

By the time Captain Cook reached Polynesia in the late 1700s, he witnessed these double-hulled canoes carrying up to 120 people, as well as livestock, and other produce. Canoes of this size would regularly sail for up to 20 days without touching land. It’s unknown how many canoes would be part of any one expedition, but everyone living on the islands had to learn how to navigate by the sea, and there is a lot of evidence of goods being shared between islands, which suggests a large amount of sea trade.

Expansion into Polynesia was a slow process, but a consistent one. The odds were clearly good enough for it to be thought that such explorations were worthwhile, and the Polynesian peoples became masters of navigating the sea, and of building fast, but spacious watercraft.

...

Paine, L. The Sea and Civilization, A Maritime History of the World.
Thompson, C. Sea People.

Awesome! Thank.you