Sailing trials with two reconstructed Polynesian double canoes indicate that these craft can make good a course to windward up to approximately 75 degrees off the wind on long ocean voyages. This windward performance would have enabled Polynesians to exert a degree of control over their movements that would have been denied them had they only been able to sail or drift before wind and current. Indeed, without this windward sailing capacity there probably never would have been a Polynesian people today, for in a sense they are a product of their maritime technology. Had there been no great voyaging canoes, the settlement of Polynesia might have had to await the relatively late entry into the Pacific of the European navigators. But the Pacific was the scene of early innovation in weatherly sailing canoes, and as the European navigators "discovered" island after island, they were surprised to find that neolithic seafarers had preceded them into this vast ocean realm.
The west to east migration of the Polynesians and their Lapita predecessors was not accomplished by tacking against the prevailing southeast trade winds, but by using periodic westerly wind reversals to sail eastward. Data on equatorial westerlies and associated ocean current effects, including those gathered during recent El Niño events, are presented to indicate how these canoe voyagers were able to migrate so far into the Pacific.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.