Navigating to the edge of the map

c. 1250–1300 CE

Not drift — navigation

Aotearoa New Zealand was one of the last large landmasses on Earth settled by people, reached by Polynesian voyagers around the thirteenth century. They arrived in ocean-going double-hulled canoes, across thousands of kilometres of open sea, against the prevailing winds for much of the route.

A twentieth-century theory held that the Pacific was populated by accidental drift. Experimental voyaging from the 1970s onward, using traditional designs and non-instrument navigation by stars, swell, wind and birds, demonstrated that these passages are sailable deliberately and repeatably. Sailing upwind is also, practically, how you explore safely: you can run home downwind if you find nothing.

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