Science Forums 2

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Michaelangelica

When Captain James Cook did his remarkable voyages criss-crossing the Pacific he picked up a native shaman. (Sorry I don't remember his name) who travelled with them for a while.
This shaman was able to draw a remarkably accurate map of all (?) the islands in the Pacific. Using this native drawn map Cook was able to find many/most pacific Islands drawn on it.
Remember that Cook was the first to use the newly discovered science of longitude. So, like few other seafarer-explores before him, he knew exactly where he was. Many of Cooks maps were so accurate they are still in use today.

So how did the native peoples of the Pacific acquire such detailed knowledge of the huge Pacific Ocean, that helped Cook so much?
No longitude, or even latitude, here? ...

Polynesian Stick Charts

The Polynesians, scattered as they were over 1,000 islands across the central and southern Pacific Ocean, were master navigators who tracked their way over a huge expanses of ocean without any of the complex mechanical aids we associate with sea fairing. They didn’t have the astrolabe or the sextant, the compass or the chronometer. They did however have aids of a sort, which though seemingly humble, were in fact the repositories of an extremely complex kind of knowledge. Called Rebbelibs, Medos. and Mattangs, today we call them simply “Stick Charts.”