Nehaveigur

My kids don’t care what I’m reading. Sometimes, when they have run out of other things to do, they leaf through my current book, only to toss it aside contemptuously after a few seconds.

Kon-Tiki is different. As soon as they saw the photos of the six bearded Scandinavians sailing their raft from America to Polynesia, they couldn’t stop asking questions. The reason for their excitement was obviously the Disney movie Moana. Did Thor Heyerdahl and his men meet Moana? Why was his vessel different from Moana’s? And actually, is the story in the book for real?

One thing Moana, Kon-Tiki and a recent visit to Margaret Mead’s dusty and seemingly unmaintained exhibition in the American Museum of Natural History taught me is that I know very little about Polynesia before European contact. Worse than that, none of the three depictions is fully accurate. Here’s Heyerdahl:

The old Polynesians were great navigators. They took bearings by the sun by day and the stars by night. Their knowledge of the heavenly bodies was astonishing. They knew that the earth was round, and they had names for such abstruse conceptions as the Equator and the northern and southern tropics. In Hawaii they cut charts of the ocean on the shells of round bottle gourds, and on certain other islands they made detailed maps of plaited boughs to which shells were attached to mark the islands, while the twigs marked particular currents. The Polynesians knew five planets, which they called wandering stars, for which they had nearly two hundred different names. A good navigator in old Polynesia knew well in what part of the sky the different stars would rise and where they would be at different times of the night and at different times of the year.

Unfortunately, the most astonishing assertions in this paragraph, including their knowledge of the Earth’s roundness and the concept of the equator, are not supported by the evidence. Here’s ChatGPT’s verdict:

Claim	Verdict	Evidence / Notes
Polynesians were great navigators	Supported	Documented in ethnohistorical accounts and modern wayfinding revivals (e.g. Hōkūleʻa).
Used sun by day, stars by night	Supported	Early Tahitian accounts; modern practice confirms use of star rise/set points and solar bearings.
Knowledge of heavenly bodies was astonishing	Supported (qualitatively)	Large indigenous star lexicons and structured sky maps show deep systematization.
They knew the Earth was round	Not supported	Hawaiian cosmology describes flat earth/sky dome; no pre-contact evidence of spherical-earth theory.
Had names for Equator and Tropics	Partly supported (nuanced)	Hawaiian terms for celestial equator and solar limits recorded (post-contact 1865/1891); authenticity debated.
In Hawaiʻi they cut charts on gourds showing oceans	Misstated	Gourd diagrams were for star/planet paths, not ocean charts.
Other islands made plaited bough maps with shells for currents	Misattributed	True for Marshall Islands stick charts (Micronesia), not Polynesia.
Knew five planets, called them wandering stars	Supported	Hawaiian terms (hōkū hele, hōkū ʻaeʻa); planets identified.
Had ~200 different names for planets	Unsubstantiated / likely exaggerated	Multiple names exist (e.g., for Venus), but no evidence for 200 planet names; number applies to star/constellation names more broadly.
Good navigators knew seasonal/star positions	Supported	Star compass requires memorizing rising/setting and seasonal shifts; documented historically and in practice.