Ancient navigation

[Ribbit]

Originally Posted by barnakiel

Ancient Polynesians do not apply along the same lines that ancient shamans do not apply as medicine doctors.

b.

If he wasn't dead (he passed away last year), my Dr of Tropical Diseases uncle (head of research for several companies, and director of others) would be having serious issues with such a statement to be honest.

Having spent a lot of time with Witchdoctors and Shamans around the World, he had a tremendous amount of respect for their knowledge and capabilities.

There were vast numbers of 'modern' medicine doctors, frankly, that he wouldn't let near him with a barge pole.

Don't forget, much of modern medicine relies on refined and synthesised active ingredient extracts from medications these people used, and still use.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by Muckle Flugga

(...)

rather absurd post.

(...)

developed political entities extending across thousands of islands, particularly in the Kingdom of Tonga.

(...)

Your Eurocentrism

(...)

Your bizarre assertion

(...)

the Europeans completely ANNIHILATED the local culture in Polynesia in a pretty systematic manner

(...)

I just see what amounts to white eurocentric prejudice going on in your posts, here, and it's frankly not a pretty sight.

Look, mate:

I find your use of some adjectives verging on rude (some examples from your most recent post visible above). I understand you find the way I express my views as not to your liking. I cannot please everybody, especially when I do not post at CF to PLEASE people. This is not Facebook and I am not out for likes. I read to learn and post to share and to discuss (at times showing views and attitudes quite opposite to the mainstream). We all act like this, to varied extent.

There is no discussion and no growth when everybody shares the same view.

I think we both have what they call a sharp pen. At times like this, it might benefit us if it were just a bit less sharp. If we were offshore, I would just board your ship and chop off your dirty tongue with my sword. ;-) The luck is, we are not.

Here, I can only tell you your verbal aggression is at the levels where you might consider talking to an aggression management specialist. Should you be in denial and claim you do not need one ... below I am giving you some points that may help us calm down and come back to a more moderated manner of exchanging our opinions.

Firstly, the Kingdom of Tonga is 169 islands strong. This is not thousands.

Secondly, I am not European and I am not Eurocentric. I may well be eccentric. This is the name the politically correct followers of the main doctrine often give to the ones that walk their own path. I am OK with an eccentric. I do not walk my path to show off or offend. I walk it for it chose me.

Thirdly, I doubt Europeans annihilated Polynesian culture. One, that we do not know exactly what that culture was all about hundreds of years ago, two that during our last visit there the culture seemed to be doing very well: their dance and music seemed on par (if not above) folk dance and music in Europe. We saw carvings, we heard stories and we witnessed local tradition well alive (e.g. raising the youngest boy in the family as a girl). Polynesian was spoken everywhere, even in NZ.

I can just imagine that you have your vision of Polynesia from your visit that maybe was at a different time and spanned across different islands. I have mine from visiting the chain from FP, thru the Cooks, Tonga, NC (I found NC more Micronesian than Polynesian in fact) to NZ.

Interestingly, in Polynesia no one called me a white prejudiced eurocentric. You did. Perhaps you think Polynesians need advocates and protectors and that you are well suited to be one. I do not think so.

Take care, be good (a Polynesian parting phrase, translated),
barnakiel

[JPA Cate]

Delancey, in post #47 of this thread, posted a picture of one of the Polynesian stick maps, which has gone largely ignored. Some friends of ours were given one in Polynesia, as a gift honoring their interactions with the locals, and the man who gave it explained its use to them. Who knows, he may even have said, "Here's a better way to do it".

From that explanation, it was clear that those "charts" could be used by those trained in their use, to return to islands, and it seemed as if that return was mostly for religious functions, as well as for trading women.

I would suggest simply that the existence of such charts implies that the voyages were more than one way trips to another new island. If you're never going away, there's no need for a record of where you've been, along with what flow direction you can detect. Those charts were created for a reason, long before tourist interaction was a factor. So, yes, they (the Polynesians) had navigators.

As to the rest, about traveling by land and by sea, the human genome has been doing that for a very long time. Read Steven Oppenheimer's book, "Black Eve" for some mapping of the spread of the human genome over the earth. It was quite an eyeopener for me.

Ann

[rognvald]

[QUOTE=Tayana42;2083349]An interesting read, 1491 by Charles Mann. It looks at the Americas ( north south and central) before European contact. Similar circumstances to ancient Polynesia. There were greatly advanced cultures with histories, mathematics, art, agriculture, civic infrastructures and managed environments. There was writing via pictographs, beads and a binary code knot writing. These things were so different from what Europeans were accustomed to that they were not recognized. And when populations were decimated due to introduced diseases whole cultures and their collected knowledge were lost.
S/V B'Shert[/QUOTE


This is certainly true, Tayana and it is a puzzling enigma for archeologists, even today, that the Aztec and Mayan cultures who possessed an advanced understanding of Astronomy, Mathematics and Engineering did not invent/use the wheel and were still a Stone Age culture in the flowering of their empires in the 16th and 10th Centuries respectively. Compare this to Europe in the 10th Century at the dawn of the Norman Conquest and empire and at the height of Europe's Renaissance in the 16th Century where intellectual contributions shaped the destiny and direction of the world for the next 600 years. While we laud the intellectual greatness of DaVinci, Michaelangelo, Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, Copernicus, Galileo, Shakespeare, Cervantes, etc. for their contributions to Art, Science and Technology during these parallel times, we have only the Mayan calendar and their Astronomy among the Meso-American gifts to the world. Hardly a small contribution, but one that pales in comparison to the explosion of ideas from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance in Christian Europe. So, are these admissions Eurocentric and oblivious to the gifts from other cultures? Or, are they taken in their proper historic perspective? As educated people, we must guard against the temptation to succumb to political/sociological trends that seek to distort the History of Man for ulterior purposes and rewrite the History of the world. The Russians and Chinese attempted this during the height of Communism and failed miserably in the education of their people. If a rose is red . . . then celebrate its redness. Good luck and safe sailing. Rognvald

[boatman61]

Wave the 'Bogeyman' card why don't you..

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Tayana42

An interesting read, 1491 by Charles Mann. It looks at the Americas ( north south and central) before European contact. Similar circumstances to ancient Polynesia. There were greatly advanced cultures with histories, mathematics, art, agriculture, civic infrastructures and managed environments. There was writing via pictographs, beads and a binary code knot writing. These things were so different from what Europeans were accustomed to that they were not recognized. And when populations were decimated due to introduced diseases whole cultures and their collected knowledge were lost.
S/V B'Shert

Nobody says that Aztecs, Mayas or Polynesians were not civilized or better that they had their proper culture but it seems that you cannot see that the same way that you would not look at a Spaniard from the Renaissance stage (1500) as civilized they would not consider any of those peoples or cultures as civilized ones.

In fact there is culturally a smaller difference between Renaissance stage and today than from Bronze age (Aztec, Maya) or stone age (Polynesian) to Renaissance.

Stone age finished in Europe between 6000 and 3700 years ago (depending on regions) and Bronze age started 6000 years ago and finished 2700 years ago. For a Spanish point of view taken from 500 years ago they had a cultural deficit of many thousands of years.

Both cultures had only a proto writing and Aztecs were still doing large scale sacrifices to the gods, a thing that was seen as an abomination by all christians for more than a thousand years.

Sure, by today parameters you would not consider Spanish civilized but you should understand that for Renaissance cultural parameters the Spanish, for the same reasons, considered the natives as uncivilized and primitive.

[boatman61]

Tell that to all the European non Catholics that were burnt, hung, drawn and quartered etc by the Holy See.. in the name of Christ..
Talk about freekin Glass House's

[rognvald]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Tell that to all the European non Catholics that were burnt, hung, drawn and quartered etc by the Holy See.. in the name of Christ..
Talk about freekin Glass House's

Boatman,
The Spanish Inquisition was concerned about Jews and Muslims who failed to convert or keep the faith. Few Protestants were involved. Here's a quick read for you. Best, Rognvald

Spanish Inquisition | Spanish history [1478-1834] | Britannica.com

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by rognvald

Boatman,
The Spanish Inquisitio n was concerned about Jews and Muslims who failed to convert or keep the faith. Few Protestants were involved. Here's a quick read for you. Best, Rognvald

Spanish Inquisition | Spanish history [1478-1834] | Britannica.com

Oh.. I guess that's all right then..

[Polux]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Tell that to all the European non Catholics that were burnt, hung, drawn and quartered etc by the Holy See.. in the name of Christ..
Talk about freekin Glass House's

Those were not sacrifices but purification sanctioned by the church. Horrible thing and special relevant in what regards Spain but the holy inquisition was not sacrificing to the gods, quite the contrary.

Inquisition was an ecclesiastical tribunal, the institution of the Catholic Church for combating heresy, where and individual accused of heresy was judged. Religious fundamentalism at work.

Off course they tortured the poor soul till he confess and then they sentence him, sometimes to dead. Some democracies still use torture as means of confession and now as then, under torture one ends up confessing everything, what he did and what the ones that are torturing him want him to say he did.

Inquisition was already considered then by many as barbaric and torture is considered by most today as barbaric. As you know some of the best man of science were scrutinized by inquisition and some were forced to declare that what they had claimed was wrong even when it was obviously right.

But the bottom point is that has nothing to sacrifices to the goods and in huge numbers. Those cultures believed that that only a great and continued sacrifice of human beings would sustains the Universe. Sacrifice of Human beings was central on their vision of the world.

"While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec

[boatman61]

"While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself."

The Great Speaker was obviously a god himself.. he could remove 14 hearts a minute..

[Polux]

Originally Posted by boatman61

What a load off Horse **** to justify a church overflowing with Hypocrisy... give it a rest and stop splitting the Eternal Hair..

I am not trying to justify anything but you seem incapable of looking to a reality with the eyes of their cultural and civilizational background.

Seems also incapable to understand that the actions of the inquisition for many of the ones that lived at that time seemed justified and blessed by the catholic church, while sacrifices to the goods were already completely unacceptable to all.

Were not a more unacceptable behaviour, at the same time table, an English king that leave Catholic church to be able to marry 6 times and to be able to decapitate two of his wives? I bet that this behaviour would look more unacceptable to a Spanish Catholic than the role of holy inquisition.

The inquisition represented Catholic church at its worse. Catholic church always represented the most conservative forces on society and at that time almost all men of science and culture were against inquisition. It has represented conservatism for centuries even if the new Pope seems to be leading the church in a different way.

[Polux]

Originally Posted by boatman61

"While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself."

The Great Speaker was obviously a god himself.. he could remove 14 hearts a minute..

He had help of other sacred priests in their noble function to maintain Universe in good shape. Here some scenes of a good movie about the civilizational state of those parts at that time. You have to understand that this was as normal to them as the inquisition was to the Spanish, at least to most of them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aG8W...8WqEyXIyc#t=18

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKVg...EyXIyc&index=6

[SailinCane]

Fascinating topic. It's interesting how ancient navigation before compasses and sextants was similar to a higher math equation. A number of imperfect inputs all averaged together to get a mostly right answer. The more techniques ancient navigators had at their disposal the more possibility there was to crosscheck one method against another.

I remember reading somewhere that in addition to celestial navigation Polynesian sailors used the long swells of the Pacific as an aid, keeping their angle to wave constant gave them an approximation of their heading.

We also have to keep in mind the survivorship bias that exists when looking at their history. Every subsequent Polynesian settlement across the Pacific was the descendant of skilled navigators, the unskilled navigators well let's just say they didn't pass on their genes. Techniques that worked got passed on to future generations.

[IslandHopper]

Originally Posted by boatman61

"While human sacrifice was practiced throughout Mesoamerica, the Aztecs, if their own accounts are to be believed, brought this practice to an unprecedented level. For example, for the reconsecration of the Great Pyramid of Tenochtitlan in 1487, the Aztecs reported that they sacrificed 80,400 prisoners over the course of four days, reportedly by Ahuitzotl, the Great Speaker himself."

The Great Speaker was obviously a god himself.. he could remove 14 hearts a minute..

Dam! and to think all this time I was under the belief Henry Ford perfected the production Line............learn something everyday on CF