A Stick Chart from the Marshall Islands (2016) | Hacker News Reader

A Stick Chart from the Marshall Islands (2016)

sapiens.org

12 pointssamclemens14 comments

> After years of practice and experience, an apprentice is blindfolded and taken in a canoe to a remote, undisclosed part of the ocean ... Once oriented, he’s allowed to rise and sail to where he thinks land should be. The proof is then in the pudding—either he makes landfall or doesn’t.

I'm not an anthropologist, but it seems so many cultures have these "tests" that are more like dares with a random chance of success. Is there some deeper meaning or ulterior motive behind them?

Selection of the luckiest. :-)

No but seriously, this is a (harsh) but effective way of weeding out those who didn't study for their "drivers license".

Presumably there's an instructor sitting in the same canoe, and/or at a safe distance in case it all goes wrong?

I could easily see that: it being not so much a life-threatening do-or-die challenge so much as a "if you are to be one of the tribal mariners, we need to be convinced of your abilities. Otherwise, you get another job. So this is your job interview."

I also don't understand the need for hyperbola:

"Archaeologists have determined that even the most remote Pacific islands were inhabited by human beings long before the advent of modern navigational techniques."

Yes, islands over vast expanses were inhabited... and it's a testament to many things including navigational prowess... but even today many remain "deserted islands"

Where is the hyperbole? The fact that island today is or may be "deserted," does nothing to diminish the fact of the navigational achievements presumably engendered by the tools and techniques discussed in the article.

In order to establish something to be inhabited, you need some kind of evidence, not just presumption. In addition, there are many islands that are not large enough to sustain any kind of lived-in habitation -or may be barren or lack fresh water. Stopping over to repair a canoe is not inhabiting some place. At the minimum an inhabited island would need enough resources to sustain a family, more likely an extended family and perhaps a settlement to be long-term inhabitable.

The presumption applies to the navigational techniques, not the inhabitance. As your own pull quote states, the inhabitance is a thing that archaeologists have determined, not presumed.

Also: where is the hyperbole?

That is a claim not a fact. The hyperbola is "even the remotest island in the Pacific was inhabited". Surely many were, but they exaggerate and imply by virtue of relative position that even the remotest island was inhabited --that is very unlikely. What is the remotest island in the Pacific if I'm on an Aleutian island, vs Micronesia, vs Indonesia, etc...

Agreed. Further, in a previous era when all humans lived tribally, everyone was accustomed to the tribal life and an island may have provided advantages in the form of isolation. However, an island has limited resources and may not be able to support a civilization much beyond a tribal level. In the modern era, the willingness to live tribally is not what it was.

Point being: What was once acceptable may not be now, thus inhabited then and deserted now. This also doesn't even touch on resource depletion (see book "Collapse" [0]) or the impact of colonialism on indigenous people.

[0] Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed: Revised Edition https://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Succeed-Rev...

Giant families + limited resources = disposable youth; people were tougher[1]; gigantic degree of labor specialization for this cultural role.

The first one is so big we see the ripples in our own culture. Most of the political arguments we've had in our life come down to disagreement about this one issue: should there or should there not be more people like us, and fewer people not like us?

To that last point, IIUC, the role of navigator was HUGE. Like a combination Pope, Stephen Hawking, and Grand Vizier . . and they ruthlessly kept their knowledge in a tiny esoteric circle, to control the means by which new lands could be found. Also so they could be the first to leave when things went bad, as they do when colonizing tiny islands in the middle of nothing.

[1] Literally tougher, skulls were thicker, but also "tougher" as in "eh, yeah, had this spear point lodged in my spine most of my life, no biggie"

Greenland's Inuits had another form of ancient maps, carving coastlines in wood.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammassalik_wooden_maps

To further understand - https://www.naturalnavigator.com/books-and-library/how-to-re...

The design of that website really caught my eye.

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