What specific technology are you referring to? I'm unaware of any Polynesians technology that couldn't plausibly been independently used tens of thousands of y

What specific technology are you referring to? I'm unaware of any Polynesians technology that couldn't plausibly been independently used tens of thousands of years earlier. The accomplishments of the Polynesians seafarers was primarily a matter of skill and oral tradition (something like 4,000 years of seafaring experience, not 40,0000.) Their most important technology was sea-worthy outrigger canoes. Numerous independent canoe cultures exist around the world dating back thousands of years ago. While canoes 40,000 years old haven't been found, I see no real reason to discount the possibility. For navigation they may have used stick charts, although that's not known for sure and the Polynesians may have relied on oral tradition instead. Either way, these technologies or their functional equivalents were plausibly available to cultures predating the Polynesians by thousands of years. There is no evidence that the Polynesians were using astrolabs, sextants, or any other instrument like that, so the relative level of technology used by contemporary European/Islamic/Classical navigators doesn't seem relevant. They used Mark 1 Eyeballs to collect information and processed that information into navigational guidance using their brains, packed with experience. Edit: I've been thinking about the matter of canoes some more. It seems to me that sea-fairing canoes would not preserve well; the earliest known canoe is from around 10,000 years ago and was found in a peat bog in the Netherlands. Peat bogs are well known for preserving buried organic matter. Conversely the oldest polynesian canoes found are only hundreds of years old. We know they were using canoes thousands of years before that because of their oral tradition and clear evidence that they were traveling in the area somehow during that time period, but archeological evidence for the boats is scarce. I don't think sea-fairing canoes are likely to be preserved for thousands of years, so I don't think the lack of archeological evidence for sea-fairing cultures thousands of years ago means much of anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205625/