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You're correct. It's not magic. Papa Mau had an encyclopedic knowledge of the sea. He knew the birds, the fish, the constellations, the currents. At high noon o
by jacobwilliamroy 8y ago
You're correct. It's not magic. Papa Mau had an encyclopedic knowledge of the sea. He knew the birds, the fish, the constellations, the currents. At high noon on an overcast day Papa Mau could tell where they were by the way the water moved the boat.
This is a massive amount of information passed on through oral tradition. It takes a long time and if you ever visit, you'll often hear people call Papa Mau the last navigator, because he was the last human to be taught this kind of navigation from early childhood. Papa Mau passed before he could finish training the next generation.
This tradition is very important to the nations of the pacific. I don't have time to properly explain why right now. I have a meeting I need to get to.
- weregiraffe 8y ago>At high noon on an overcast day Papa Mau could tell where they were by the way the water moved the boat. Sounds like a job for a neural network. Train it with video of the water as input and coordinates as output.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- snowwrestler 8y agoIt was, in fact, the job of a neural network.
- crooked-v 8y ago> Papa Mau passed before he could finish training the next generation. However, a new school of navigation was recreated from what he did pass on by one of his students, who recreated his non-instrument trip from Hawaii to Tahiti and then spent decades performing elaborate non-instrument trips around the Pacific as well as teaching other new navigators. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nainoa_Thompson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nainoa_Thompson
- narrator 8y agoGoing down the Wikipedia rabbit hole and reading about Papa Mau's tiny home island of "Satawal": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satawal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satawal "On March 18, 1994, the freighter Oceanus ventured out of the main shipping channel when its captain attempted to peek at topless Satawalese women. The freighter ran aground on the nearby Wenimong Reef, the primary source of food for the islanders, and 13,000 square meters of the reef were ravaged. The freighter's insurer, the North of England P&I Association, ended up paying US$2 million in compensation to the Satawalese.[2]"
- masonic 8y agoThat oddly parallels the 2012 Costa Concordia shipwreck.
- quakeguy 8y agoPlease explain it, later. Sounds very interresting to hear.
- jacobwilliamroy 8y agoI interviewed one of the hawaiian elders who did a lot of work to save hawaiian graveyards from rogue archeology students, real estate developers, and the hawaii state government. To paraphrase what he said: "if we don't become experts on our own people, then they become the experts."
- DrScump 8y agoStrange coincidence: I just happen to be watching the PBS Nova episode "Great Human Odyssey", which shows Mau student Kalepa Baybayan's planned 3-year circumnavigation on the Hokule'a using traditional navigation techniques.