Scan barcode
A review by buermann
An Ocean in Mind by Will Kyselka
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
5.0
I've long thought of the expansion of Austronesian civilization across the Pacific and Indian oceans from Madagascar to Easter Island (and almost necessarily their contacts with East Africa and South America) as one of the greatest adventures in human history. This book is a travelogue, about a crew sailing from Hawaii to Tahiti and back again, without instruments or other navigational aides beyond the mind of the navigator, dead-reckoning their way over vast stretches of ocean, proving, I think, that the ancient settlers of far flung atolls were no shipwrecked wanderers but systemic explorers and traders, masters of their environment.
It's remarkable that Mau Piailug was alive to pass the torch of their ancient navigation techniques to Nainoa Thompson, and all the more remarkable that Thompson was able to reverse engineer Piailug's methods (with the help of a modern planetarium and this book's author) where learning them in the traditional modes might have meant losing them forever, and has since taught new generations of students their system. Those students have since circumnavigated the globe multiple times without recourse to quadrants, sextants, astrolabes, compasses, speedometers, chronometers, radios, radar, meteorological forecasts, or satellites.
When the fossil famines eventually tear apart the final fragments of modern civilization and the last GPS satellites de-orbit from the sky it's comforting to think that there will still be people who know how to find their way around, wondering how the rest of us lost our way.
It's remarkable that Mau Piailug was alive to pass the torch of their ancient navigation techniques to Nainoa Thompson, and all the more remarkable that Thompson was able to reverse engineer Piailug's methods (with the help of a modern planetarium and this book's author) where learning them in the traditional modes might have meant losing them forever, and has since taught new generations of students their system. Those students have since circumnavigated the globe multiple times without recourse to quadrants, sextants, astrolabes, compasses, speedometers, chronometers, radios, radar, meteorological forecasts, or satellites.
When the fossil famines eventually tear apart the final fragments of modern civilization and the last GPS satellites de-orbit from the sky it's comforting to think that there will still be people who know how to find their way around, wondering how the rest of us lost our way.