Case 6
- Polynesian Voyaging, 21st century sources 2
K.R. Howe (Editor). Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific. Auckland: David Bateman, 2006.
Published in 2006 to accompany an exhibition of the same name at Auckland Museum, Vaka Moana brings together scholarship on traditional voyaging and navigation and the peopling of the Pacific.
Leading New Zealand and international scholars, writers and practitioners discuss the oral traditions of the great voyagers; the exploration and settlement of the Pacific; the craft that made the journeys possible and the navigation methods that took people across empty oceans; the fateful meeting of Pacific and European cultures in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries; and the revival in traditional techniques of boatbuilding and long-distance voyaging and the reawakening of Pacific pride.
K.R. Howe (Editor). Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific. Auckland: David Bateman, 2006.
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Andrew Crowe. Pathway of the Birds: The Voyaging Achievements of Māori and their Polynesian Ancestors. Auckland: David Bateman, 2018.
In one of the most expansive and rapid phases of human migration in prehistory, Polynesians reached and settled nearly every archipelago scattered across some 28 million square kilometres of the Pacific Ocean, an area now known as East Polynesia. Pathway of the Birds conveys some of the skills, innovation, resourcefulness and courage of the people who drove this feat of maritime exploration.
An author of numerous natural history books, Crowe examines the scientific testing of traditional craft and the Polynesian skills of non-instrument navigation, including the observation of the long-distance navigation of birds. He concludes that Polynesian voyagers were enterprising explorers and intentional two-way navigators.
Andrew Crowe. Pathway of the Birds: The Voyaging Achievements of Māori and their Polynesian Ancestors. Auckland: David Bateman, 2018.
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