Looking for Lost Proficiency in East Polynesian Voyaging Traditions and Ethnology

ABSTRACT

The lost proficiency hypothesis holds that ancient voyaging technology in East Polynesia was superior to that recorded historically. It provides an indispensable assumption for modern experimental voyaging and associated research, but its origins in traditional migration narratives and associated ethnology are uncertain. Inspection of Maori voyaging traditions, published between 1840 and 1970, implies lost proficiency in the supernatural abilities of ancestors but not in technological change, except by comparison with post-European contact evidence. Ethnological considerations extending to the late 18th century also indicate that no greater technical capability in ocean-going canoes existed before European arrival than was observed in the early decades afterwards. These results suggest that the early historical record of East Polynesian canoes might provide more useful information about ancient voyaging technology than the assumptions involved in current experimentation and simulation. They also underline the role of lost proficiency in the cultural politics of conjecture about ancient voyaging.

Key words:

• Maori oral traditions
• lost proficiency
• canoe ethnology
• voyaging technology

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Richard Walter and Rangi Moeka‘a, History and Traditions of Rarotonga, Memoir 51 (Auckland: Polynesian Society, 2000), 138. Tara‘Are was writing in the 1860s.

² Weatherliness is the degree to which a vessel can sail efficiently into the wind. Canoe sides could be raised, or not, by addition of extra strakes, or planks.

³ ‘Lost proficiency’ is similar to G.M. Dening's ‘Principle of Degeneration’ contained in his chapter, ‘The Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians and the Nature of Inter-Island contact’, in Polynesian Navigation: A Symposium on Andrew Sharp’s Theory of Accidental Voyages, ed. Jack Golson (Wellington: The Polynesian Society 1963), 120. Degeneration implies an incremental loss of technology or skill by decay. Lost proficiency is preferred as a broader term that can include additional agencies of change: rupture in technological transmission, adaptation to differing geographical or temporal conditions (e.g. climate change), or introduction of new technologies.

⁴ The modern addition of ‘Aotearoa’ to ‘New Zealand’ has no clear traditional origin. The earliest recorded Maori name for New Zealand as a whole was the transliterated ‘Niu Tirani’ (as in the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi) which is still used by some tribes, including mine, Ngai Tahu.

⁵ Abraham Fornander, An Account of the Polynesian Race: Its Origins and Migrations, vol. II (London: Trūbner, 1880), 8.

⁶ A.C. Haddon and James Hornell, Definition of Terms, General Survey, and Conclusions (Honolulu: Bishop Museum, 1938), 46–50, who took much of their Maori canoe discussion from Percy Smith, suggested that, ‘the retrograde state into which Maori seafaring had fallen at the time when New Zealand first became known to Europeans’ was probably comparable to that of its early Oceanic development, a devolutionary hypothesis.

⁷ Ben Finney, ‘Ocean Sailing Canoes’, in Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors, ed. K.R. Howe (Auckland: Bateman, 2006), 144 on Hawai‘i; Geoffrey Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, also in Vaka Moana, 88, on New Zealand argued that, ‘like the rest of East Polynesia, New Zealand was originally settled by double-hulled canoes, and their decline is related to the new environment’.

⁸ Atholl Anderson, ‘The Origins of Ancient Sailing Technologies in the Pacific Ocean’, in The Oxford Handbook of Island and Coastal Archaeology, ed. Scott M. Fitzpatrick and Jon Erlandson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Atholl Anderson, ‘An Historical Analysis of Waka Unua and the Māori Sail’, Journal of the Polynesian Society (hereinafter JPS) 131 (2022): 33–70.

⁹ Finney, ‘Ocean Sailing Canoes’, 143; Ben Finney, Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors (Honolulu: Bishop Museum Press, 2003), 9.

¹⁰ S. Percy Smith, ‘Hawaiki: The Whence of the Maori: Being an Introduction to Rarotonga History’, JPS 7 (1898): 137–77.

¹¹ D.M. Stafford, Te Arawa: A History of the Arawa People (Auckland: Reed, 1967), 9.

¹² For example, H.T. (Te) Whatahoro (translated by S. Percy Smith), The Lore of the Whare Wananga, vol. 2 (Wellington: Memoirs of the Polynesian Society 4, 1915), 205–26; Elsdon Best, The Māori Canoe: An Account of Various Types of Vessels used by the Māori of New Zealand in Former Times … , Dominion Museum Bulletin no. 7 (Wellington, NZ: Board of Māori Ethnological Research for the Dominion Museum, 1925), 391–405; Jeff Evans, Nga Waka o Nehera: The First Voyaging Canoes (Auckland: Reed, 1997).

¹³ For aspects of voyaging in Maori tradition that have been subjected to systematic analysis, see D.R. Simmons and Bruce Biggs, ‘The Sources of The Lore of the Whare-Wananga’, JPS 79 (1970): 22–42; D.R. Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth: A Study of the Discovery and Origin Traditions of the Maori (Wellington: Reed, 1976); M.P.K. Sorrenson, Maori Origins and Migrations: The Genesis of Some Pakeha Myths and Legends (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1979); Atholl Anderson, Te Ao Tawhito, The Old World 3000 BC – AD 1830 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2016), 40–67.

¹⁴ Edward Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions of the New Zealanders (London: Longman, 1854), 330.

¹⁵ William Colenso did not believe Maori traditions to be historical, ‘On the Maori Races of New Zealand’, Transactions and Proceedings of the New Zealand Institute (hereinafter TPNZI) 1 (1868): 397–404; and oral traditions are seen as timeless or repetitive articulations of key features or issues in societal relationships by some anthropologists, e.g., Margaret Orbell, Hawaiki: A New Approach to Maori Tradition, University of Canterbury Publications no. 35 (Christchurch: University of Canterbury, 1985).

¹⁶ Rawiri Te Maire Tau, Nga Pikitūroa o Ngāi Tahu: The Oral Traditions of Ngāi Tahu (Dunedin: University of Otago Press, 2003), 17–20, 174–80, 267–73; Rawiri Taonui, ‘Polynesian Oral Traditions’, in Vaka Moana, ed. Howe, 23–53. See, also, Morgan Tuimaleali‘ifano and Paul D‘Arcy, ‘Oral Traditions in Pacific History’, in The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean, vol. I, ed. Ryan Tucker Jones and Matt K. Matsuda (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 276–95; Nēpia Mahuika, ‘Kōrero Tuku Iho: Reconfiguring Oral History and Oral Tradition’ (PhD thesis, University of Waikato, 2012), 310–27, distinguishes between Maori oral histories and traditions; the voyaging issues here would lie mainly in oral traditions.

¹⁷ Rawiri Te Maire Tau, ‘Mātauranga Māori as an Epistomology’, in Histories, Power and Loss: Uses of the Past – A New Zealand Commentary, ed. Andrew Sharp and Paul McHugh (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2001), 61–73. Also Nēpia Mahuika, ‘A Brief History of Whakapapa: Maori Approaches to Genealogy’, Genealogy 3, no. 2 (2019): 32, which puts whakapapa at ‘the heart and core of all Maori institutions’.

¹⁸ Pei Te Hurinui Jones and Bruce Biggs, Nga Iwi o Tainui: The Traditional History of the Tainui People (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1995), 7; see, also, Edward Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand (London: Longman, 1851), 92–104; Te Rangi Hiroa, ‘The Value of Tradition in Polynesian Research’, JPS 35 (1926): 181–203; Te Maire Tau and Atholl Anderson, eds., Ngai Tahu: A Migration History – The Carrington Text (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2008).

¹⁹ James Hamlin, ‘On the Mythology of the New Zealanders’, The Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science, Agriculture, Statistics, &c. 1 (1842); William Wade, A Journey in the Northern Island of New Zealand … (Hobart: George Rolwegan, 1842); Shortland, Traditions and Superstitions, 13.

²⁰ Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 169.

²¹ Shortland, The Southern Districts of New Zealand, 11–13.

²² Sir George Grey (W.W. Bird, ed.), Polynesian Mythology (Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, [1856] 1956), 109–14; Best, The Maori Canoe, 398; Rev. Richard Taylor, Te Ika a Maui: New Zealand and its Inhabitants (London: Wertheim and MacIntosh, 1855), 123.

²³ Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 163.

²⁴ Single sails were fairly common on canoes, and by the mid-19th century large waka taua and similar canoes, such as Toki-a-tapiri, built in Hawkes Bay 1855–61 for Auckland Museum, had provision for two or three sails.

²⁵ Te Rangi Hiroa, The Coming of the Maori (Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1950), 45, on Grey’s faulty translation of the Aotea text.

²⁶ Grey, Polynesian Mythology,161–72, and similar comments on Tokomaru, 176–8. Hetaraka Tautahi and Werahika Taipuhi, ‘The “Aotea” Canoe: The Migration of Turi to Aotea-roa (New Zealand)’, JPS 9 (1900): 200–33.

²⁷ Apirana Ngata, ‘The Io Cult – Early Migration-Puzzle of the Canoes’, JPS 59 (1950): 345.

²⁸ ‘Ahuriri Natives’ account to John White, in Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 118; Ropiha account, Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 116–17.

²⁹ Horatio Hale, United States Exploring Expedition 1838–1841: Ethnography and Philology (Philadelphia: Lea and Blanchard, 1846), 146; Arthur S. Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, vol. 1 (London: Murray, 1859), 60–1, 65.

³⁰ Takaanui Tarakawa, ‘The Coming of Mata-atua, Kurahaupo, and other Canoes from Hawaiki to New Zealand’, JPS 3 (1894): 65.

³¹ Thomson, The Story of New Zealand, 60; Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 222.

³² Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 160.

³³ Anderson, ‘An Historical Analysis of Waka Unua and the Māori Sail’, 63.

³⁴ J.S. Polack, Manners and Customs of the New Zealanders, vol. 1 (London: James Madden, 1840), 224; see, also, Marsden 1814 in John Rawson Elder, The Letters and Journals of Samuel Marsden, 1765–1838 (Dunedin: Coulls Somerville Wilkie, 1932), 96; Best, The Maori Canoe, 266.

³⁵ Anderson, ‘An Historical Analysis of Waka Unua and the Māori Sail’, 33–70; following the 1820s introduction of the Oceanic spritsail, some lake canoes were said to sail close to the wind by Ernest Dieffenbach, New Zealand with Contributions to the Geography, Geology, Botany and Natural History of that Country, vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1843), 128.

³⁶ Much of the new material on canoe traditions was published by the JPS under Smith, the dominant editor 1892–1922, who, ‘had always seen the prime purpose of the Polynesian Society as the collecting and publishing of Polynesian oral traditions’: M.P.K. Sorrenson, Manifest Duty: The Polynesian Society over 100 years (Auckland: The Polynesian Society, 1992), 33, 34–8; Sorrenson, Maori Origins and Migrations, 34–57 for an historical overview of traditionalism.

³⁷ Hare Hongi, ‘The Story of the “Takitimu” Canoe’, JPS 17 (1908): 93–107.

³⁸ Te Whatahoro (Hoani Turi Te Whatahoro Jury) was Smith’s ‘“scribe” in Whatahoro’, The Lore of the Whare Wananga 2 (1915): 209–12, 218, 223; Tiaki Hikawera Mitira (J.H. Mitchell), Takitimu (Christchurch: Reed, 1944), 31.

³⁹ E. Best, ‘Maori Voyagers and their Vessels’, TNZI 48 (1916): 453. Traditionally, paddlers knelt on an internal floor and did not sit on thwarts.

⁴⁰ E. Tapsell, Historic Maketu (Rotorua: Rotorua Morning Post Printing House, 1940), quoted in Jeff Evans, Nga Waka o Nehera: The First Voyaging Canoes (Auckland: Reed, 1997), 40; John Te H. Grace, Tuwharetoa: A History of the Maori People of the Taupo District (Auckland: Reed, 1959); Smith in Te Whatahoro, The Lore of the Whare Wananga, 88; Tainui was said to have a single outrigger and a hull 70 feet to 90 feet long: Best, The Māori Canoe, 40; Jones and Biggs, Nga Iwi o Tainui, 28.

⁴¹ S. Percy Smith, History and Traditions of the Taranaki Coast (New Plymouth: Thomas Avery, 1915), 89.

⁴² Best, The Māori Canoe, 258–62.

⁴³ Mahuika, ‘A Brief History of Whakapapa’, 3.

⁴⁴ Te Maire Tau, ‘The Death of Knowledge: Ghosts on the Plains’, New Zealand Journal of History (hereinafter NZJH) 35 (2001): 131–52, shows that when the overall burden of novel information arising from European colonization became too great, the matauranga Maori system could collapse.

⁴⁵ M.P.K. Sorrenson, ‘Polynesian Corpuscles and Pacific Anthropology: The Home-Made Anthropology of Sir Apirana Ngata and Sir Peter Buck’, JPS 92 (1982): 7–28.

⁴⁶ Ngata, ‘The Io Cult’, 340–6.

⁴⁷ Te H. Grace, Tuwharetoa, 54–5; Rongowhakaata Halbert, Horouta: The History of the Horouta Canoe, Gisborne and East Coast (Auckland: Reed, 1999), from material gathered during the period 1920–60; Mitira, Takitimu, 23.

⁴⁸ Hiroa, The Coming of the Maori, 41, 43, 200–1.

⁴⁹ Simmons and Biggs, ‘The Sources of The Lore of the Whare-Wananga’, 41; Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth, 112, 114; Judge (Lieut.-Col.) W.E. Gudgeon, ‘The Whence of the Maori: Part I’, JPS 11 (1902): 188, wrote that we ‘can never do more than advance theories founded on traditions, which are but imperfectly known even to the most learned Maoris of the present day, and which, not unfrequently, appear to have been made up for the occasion’.

⁵⁰ Andrew Sharp, Ancient Voyagers in Polynesia (Auckland: Paul’s Book Arcade, 1963), 86. Stafford, Te Arawa, 12; J.D.H. Buchanan, edited by D.R. Simmons, Maori History and Place Names of Hawke’s Bay (Wellington: Reed, 1973), 17; J.M. McEwen, Rangitane: A Tribal History (Auckland: Reed, 1986), 11.

⁵¹ McEwen, Rangitane, 10–12.

⁵² For comments by Roggeveen, see Andrew Sharp, The Journal of Jacob Roggeveen (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), 153; George Forster, A Voyage Round the World, in His Britannic Majesty’s Sloop, Resolution … , vol. I (London: B. White, etc., 1777), 398; and Johann Forster in Michael Hoare, ed., The Resolution Journal of Johann Reinhold Forster 1772–1775 (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1982), 641.

⁵³ Dieffenbach, New Zealand with Contributions to the Geography, 96–7; Elsdon Best, Polynesian Voyagers: The Maori as a Deep-sea Navigator, Explorer and Colonizer, Dominion Museum monograph 5 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1923), 17.

⁵⁴ F.D. Fenton, Suggestions for a History of the Origins and Migrations of the Maori People (Auckland: Brett, 1885), 87–8; Gudgeon, ‘The Whence of the Maori: Part I’, 179; idem, ‘The Whence of the Maori: Part II’, JPS 11 (1902): 250–1. Hamlin, ‘On the Mythology of the New Zealanders’, 260, reported that some migration canoes ‘are said to have been of a very large size, similar to those in use in some of the [Pacific] islands in the present day’.

⁵⁵ ‘Polynesian’ was used by Smith and others to describe not only people who had lived, or were living, in Polynesia, but also proposed ancestors further west in the Pacific.

⁵⁶ S. Percy Smith, ‘Notes on the Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians’, in Report of the Third Meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, ed. James Hector (Wellington: Government Printer, 1891), 284.

⁵⁷ J.C. Beaglehole, ed., The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1962), 364–8.

⁵⁸ Smith, ‘Notes on the Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians’, 280–310.

⁵⁹ For Smith speculating on the voyage of a Tahitian ancestor, Auenga, see ibid., 285.

⁶⁰ Only Banks in Beaglehole, The Endeavour Journal, 367, suggests Tahitian canoes in general were able to ‘lay very near the wind’. That was true of outrigger canoes on the lagoon but few pahi were seen sailing by Endeavour observers and all but one depicted in 1768 was sailing to leeward: Rüdiger Joppien and Bernard Smith, The Art of Captain Cook’s Voyages, vol. 1 (New Haven: Yale University Press).

⁶¹ S. Percy Smith, ‘Hawaiki: The Whence of the Maori: Being an Introduction to Rarotonga History’, JPS 7 (1898): 157.

⁶² S. Percy Smith, Hawaiki: The Original Home of the Maori; with a Sketch of Polynesian History (Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1904), 110.

⁶³ Whatahoro, The Lore of the Whare Wananga, 34.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Smith, Hawaiki, 120. There is no evidence of the ‘alia in early historical East Polynesia.

⁶⁶ Hale, United States Exploring Expedition 1838–1841, 147.

⁶⁷ Best, Polynesian Voyagers, 18, 27; Best, The Maori Canoe, 396–7.

⁶⁸ Hiroa, The Coming of the Maori, 49, 202. He envisaged voyaging canoes as combining sail and paddle propulsion; Smith, ‘Notes on the Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians’, 285, 290; Sir Peter Buck, Vikings of the Sunrise (Christchurch: Whitcombe and Tombs, 1954), 35, 88.

⁶⁹ Smith, ‘Notes on the Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians’, 285, 290.

⁷⁰ Ibid., 285.

⁷¹ Best, Polynesian Voyagers, 397.

⁷² Haddon and Hornell, Definition of Terms, 43, argued that by the second half of the 18th century, ‘the navigation and boat-building of the Polynesians was already declining’.

⁷³ Sharp, Ancient Voyagers in Polynesia, 58, agreed that double canoes were stable, capacious, and capable of long-distance sailing downwind.

⁷⁴ Atholl Anderson, ‘Traditionalism, Interaction, and Long-Distance Seafaring in Polynesia’, Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology 3 (2008): 241.

⁷⁵ Nicholas Thomas, Voyagers: The Settlement of the Pacific (London: Apollo, 2021), 166–7, misunderstands my critique of this, which is that comparative data indicate largely evolving, not devolving, maritime technology and, therefore, that modern anthropological invention of enhanced Polynesian sailing capabilities is at odds with both historical observation and plausible ancient technology.

⁷⁶ Herb Kawainui Kane, Voyagers (Honolulu: Whalesong, 1991); Ben Finney, Hokule‘a: The Way to Tahiti (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1979), 23–4. An unrecorded vessel could not, of course, be ‘replicated’.

⁷⁷ Cf. Smith’s preference for the ‘alia/pahi as migration canoe. Irwin (in Howe, Vaka Moana, 80) asserted that ‘prehistoric ocean-going canoes needed to be sailed – they could not be paddled effectively except for manoeuvring close to land’ but, amongst evidence to the contrary, they were paddled on passages of up to 700 km in colonizing the Caribbean; S.M. Fitzpatrick, ‘Seafaring Capabilities in the Pre-Columbian Caribbean’, Journal of Maritime Archaeology 8 (2013): 101–38, see also note 82.

⁷⁸ For example, built-in buoyancy, sailcloth, cordage and lines, headsails, radio and navigation equipment, auxiliary motors. Woven pandanus sails have been used close to land on various experimental canoes but their deficiencies of weight, water absorption, and strength are such that none have been used throughout ocean passages.

⁷⁹ That conclusion remains accepted, if largely implicitly, in modern simulation research, e.g. G. Irwin, R.G. Flay, L. Dudley, and D. Johns, ‘The Sailing Performance of Ancient Polynesian Canoes and the Early Settlement of East Polynesia’, Archaeology in Oceania 58 (2023): 74–90.

⁸⁰ The stories in Grey’s Polynesian Mythology had been re-written by him to make them more intelligible and appealing to European readers.

⁸¹ Jones and Biggs, Nga Iwi o Tainui, 28.

⁸² ‘Mataorua’ (cf. Kupe's canoe) was a sail on Te Arawa and two sails were named on Takitimu (Whatahoro, The Lore of the Whare Wananga, 218). There was ample opportunity for more coherent accounts of traditional sailing, had they existed, to have ended up in the papers of members of the Polynesian Society – Maori or Pakeha.

⁸³ They steered with hand-held paddles, not the large pivoting ‘paddles’ (i.e. oars) of West Polynesia.

⁸⁴ Te Rauroa o Hiva with skipper Pito Clément made the journey to recreate the ancient paddling voyage of Tangiia, one of the founders of Rarotonga. Dennis Kawaharada, ‘1992 Voyage: Sail to Rarotonga’, Polynesian Voyaging Society, https://archive.hokulea.com/1992.html. There was an escort vessel, as for most of the sailing canoes, although some food and water was supplied to Te Rauroa on passage. Numerous paddled or rowed vessels made offshore passages long before the advent of sail, as in the Caribbean and the North Sea. Steven Horvath and Ben Finney wrote, ‘Paddling as an auxiliary source of power may … have been a significant factor in long range voyaging’. ‘Paddling Experiments and the Question of Polynesian Voyaging’, in Pacific Navigation and Voyaging, ed. Ben Finney (Wellington: The Polynesian Society, 1976), 54. See, also, Anderson, ‘Traditionalism, Interaction’; Atholl Anderson, ‘Changing Perspectives upon Māori Colonisation Voyaging’, Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 47 (2017): 222–31; Anderson, ‘The Origins of Ancient Sailing Technologies’.

⁸⁵ Ian D. Goodwin, Stuart A. Browning, and Atholl J. Anderson, ‘Climate Windows for Polynesian Voyaging to New Zealand and Easter Island’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111 (2014): 14716–21.

⁸⁶ Finney in Howe, Vaka Moana, 118, changed his mind later to argue that paddling was used close to shore but, ‘voyaging canoes were primarily sailing vessels’.

⁸⁷ Johann Reinhold Forster, Observations Made During a Voyage Round the World, ed. Nicholas Thomas, Harriet Guest, and Michael Dettelbach (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996), 342.

⁸⁸ John Liddiard Nicholas, Narrative of a Voyage to New Zealand: Performed in the Years 1814 and 1815 in Company with the Rev. Samuel Marsden … , vol. 1 (London: James Black & Son, 1817), 17; C. Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle (New York: Collier, 1909), 423–5.

⁸⁹ Smith, ‘Notes on the Geographical Knowledge of the Polynesians’, 293.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 286.

⁹¹ K.R. Howe, ‘Introduction’, in Vaka Moana, 11; Damon Salesa, An Indigenous Ocean: Pacific Essays (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2023), 82–6. In fact, long-distance voyaging occurred earlier than in East Polynesia (i.e. before about ad 1050) in the Atlantic, where the Norse reached Newfoundland and Madeira, and the Phoenicians and Romans the Canary Islands; in the Indian Ocean from Africa to India, if not in Austronesian migration (Anderson, forthcoming), and in the Pacific, directly between Ecuador and Mexico 2500 years ago. Atholl Anderson ‘Returning to the Hypothesis of Amerindian Settlement on Rapa Nui (Easter Island)’, JPS 130 (2021): 245–56.

⁹² Experimental oceanic voyaging is a valuable method, laboratory simulation less so in this matter. Even in recent research, the modelled sailing environment excludes variables such as swell and wave action and their influence on wind conditions near sea level, while the technological choices exclude paddling and are primarily those of the modern voyaging movement. See, for example, A. Montenegro, R.T. Callaghan, and S.M. Fitzpatrick, ‘Using Seafaring Simulations and Shortest-Hop Trajectories to Model the Prehistoric Colonization of Remote Oceania’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113 (2016): 12685–90; Irwin, Flay, Dudley, and Johns, ‘The Sailing Performance’.

⁹³ Sydney Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas in His Majesty’s Ship, the Endeavour (Adelaide: Australiana Facsimile Editions A34, [1773] 1972), 102. Migration voyaging in canoes of relatively simple technology makes better sense of the distribution of the Oceanic double-sprit sail, the later diffusion of West Polynesian lateen technology, and development of the Oceanic spritsail in tropical East Polynesia. Generally increasing, not decreasing, sailing performance is reflected in this sequence, and that is, as a matter of fact, the usual documented trajectory of change in global sailing history. Anderson, ‘The Origins of Ancient Sailing Technologies’.