EARLY CHARTING

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 19985, 10 July 1939, Page 6

EARLY CHARTING

NATIVES IN PACIFIC POLYNESIAN APTITUDE “We are accustomed to saying that the various islands of the Pacific were discovered by the great navigators of the European nations, when actually ail the inhabited islands were discovered by the native navigators many generations before the first white explorers entered the Pacific,” said Mr. Harold Gatty, New Zealand representative of Pan-American Airways, in an address to the anthropology and Maori race section of the Auckland Institute and Museum. Mr. Gatty spoke on the charts and maps of primitive peoples.

The extensive geographical knowledge of the natives in the Pacific was of great value to the early European explorers, Mr. Gatty stated. In many cases the natives outlined the extent of their geographical knowledge by drawing on the sand and at other times by means of stones or shells. The accounts of the early explorers contained abundant testimony of the valuable directions given them by natives.

Geographical Knowledge “No primitive race is comparable with the early Polynesians in the extent of their wanderings and, consequently, the extent of their geographical knowledge,” he continued. "It is only natural that among these oceanicpeople we should find a marked superiority in cartographic aptitude. This geographical knowledge is well demonstrated by a chart obtained by Captain Cook on his first voyage to the Pacific. It was made on information supplied by the Tahitian high priest Tupaia. and contained all the principal groups of Polynesia, with the exception of New Zealand and the Hawaiian Islands.” Different conditions in Micronesia from tiie rest of the Pacific caused a difference in nagivational methods These people had the distinction of not only mapping the positions oi their islands in the relation of one to the other, but also of actually mapping features of the surface of the sea between and among their island groups. It did seem strange that a neolithic people should be able to accomplish a system of oceanic charting unknown to skilled hydrographers of modern times and one w-hich the-. were unable to duplicate.