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Reading Practice
Pacific
navigation and voyaging
How
people migrated to the Pacific islands
The many tiny islands of the Pacific Ocean had no human
population until ancestors of today’s islanders sailed from Southeast Asia in
ocean-going canoes approximately 2,000 years ago. At the present time, the
debate continues about exactly how they migrated such vast distances across the
ocean, without any of the modern technologies we take for granted.
Although the romantic vision of some early
twentieth-century writers of fleets of heroic navigators simultaneously setting
sail had come to be considered by later investigators to be exaggerated, no
considered assessment of Pacific voyaging was forthcoming until 1956 when the
American historian Andrew Sharp published his research. Sharp challenged the
‘heroic vision’ by asserting that the expertise of the navigators was limited,
and that the settlement of the islands was not systematic, being more dependent
on good fortune by drifting canoes. Sharp’s theory was widely challenged, and
deservedly so. If nothing else, however, it did spark renewed interest in the
topic and precipitated valuable new research.
Since the 1960s a wealth of investigations has been
conducted, and most of them, thankfully, have been of the ‘non-armchair’
variety. While it would be wrong to denigrate all ‘armchair’ research - that
based on an examination of available published materials - it has turned out
that so little progress had been made in the area of Pacific voyaging because
most writers relied on the same old sources - travelers’ journals or missionary
narratives compiled by unskilled observers. After Sharp, this began to change,
and researchers conducted most of their investigations not in libraries, but in
the field.
In 1965, David Lewis, a physician and experienced
yachtsman, set to work using his own unique philosophy: he took the yacht he
had owned for many years and navigated through the islands in order to contact
those men who still find their way at sea using traditional methods. He then
accompanied these men, in their traditional canoes, on test voyages from which
all modern instruments were banished from sight, though Lewis secretly used
them to confirm the navigator’s calculations. His most famous such voyage was a
return trip of around 1,000 nautical miles between two islands in midocean. Far
from drifting, as proposed by Sharp, Lewis found that ancient navigators would
have known which course to steer by memorizing which stars rose and set in
certain positions along the horizon and this gave them fixed directions by
which to steer their boats.
The geographer Edwin Doran followed a quite different
approach. He was interested in obtaining exact data on canoe sailing
performance, and to that end employed the latest electronic instrumentation.
Doran traveled on board traditional sailing canoes in some of the most remote
parts of the Pacific, all the while using his instruments to record canoe
speeds in different wind strengths - from gales to calms - the angle canoes
could sail relative to the wind. In the process, he provided the first really
precise attributes of traditional sailing canoes.
A further contribution was made by Steven Horvath. As a
physiologist, Horvath’s interest was not in navigation techniques or in canoes,
but in the physical capabilities of the men themselves. By adapting standard
physiological techniques, Horvath was able to calculate the energy expenditure
required to paddle canoes of this sort at times when there was no wind to fill
the sails, or when the wind was contrary. He concluded that paddles, or perhaps
long oars, could indeed have propelled for long distances what were primarily
sailing vessels.
Finally, a team led by p Wall Garrard conducted important
research, in this case by making investigations while remaining safely in the
laboratory. Wall Garrard’s unusual method was to use the findings of linguists
who had studied the languages of the Pacific islands, many of which are
remarkably similar although the islands where they are spoken are sometimes
thousands of kilometres apart. Clever adaptation of computer simulation
techniques pioneered in other disciplines allowed him to produce convincing
models suggesting the migrations were indeed systematic, but not simultaneous.
Wall Garrard proposed the migrations should be seen not as a single journey
made by a massed fleet of canoes, but as a series of ever more ambitious
voyages, each pushing further into the unknown ocean.
What do we learn about Pacific navigation and voyaging from
this research? Quite correctly, none of the researchers tried to use their
findings to prove one theory or another; experiments such as these cannot
categorically confirm or negate a hypothesis. The strength of this research lay
in the range of methodologies employed. When we splice together these findings
we can propose that traditional navigators used a variety of canoe types,
sources of water and navigation techniques, and it was this adaptability which
was their greatest accomplishment. These navigators observed the conditions
prevailing at sea at the time a voyage was made and altered their techniques
accordingly. Furthermore, the canoes of the navigators were not drifting
helplessly at sea but were most likely part of a systematic migration; as such,
the Pacific peoples were able to view the ocean as an avenue, not a barrier, to
communication before any other race on Earth. Finally, one unexpected but most
welcome consequence of this research has been a renaissance in the practice of
traditional voyaging. In some groups of islands in the Pacific today young
people are resurrecting the skills of their ancestors, when a few decades ago
it seemed they would be lost forever.
Question 1-5
Do
the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading
Passage?
In
boxes 1-5 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of
the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of
the writer
NOT GIVEN if is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1..................... The Pacific islands were uninhabited when
migrants arrived by sea from Southeast Asia
2..................... Andrew Sharp was the first person to write
about the migrants to islanders
3..................... Andrew Sharp believed migratory voyages
were based on more on luck than skill
4..................... Despite being controversial, Andrew
Sharp’s research had positive results
5..................... Edwin Doran disagreed with the findings of
Lewis’s research
Questions 6-10
Choose
the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write
the correct letter in boxes 6-10 on your answer sheet.
6. David Lewis’s research was different
because A he observed traditional navigators at work
B he
conducted test voyages using his own yacht
C he
carried no modern instruments on test voyages
D he
spoke the same language as the islanders he sailed with
7. What did
David Lewis’s research discover about traditional navigators?
A They
used the sun and moon to find their position
B They
could not sail further than about 1,000 nautical miles
C They knew which direction they were sailing in
D They were able to drift for long distances
8. What are we
told about Edwin Doran’s research?
A Data
were collected after the canoes had returned to land
B Canoe
characteristics were recorded using modern instruments
C Research
was conducted in the most densely populated regions
D Navigators
were not allowed to see the instruments Doran used
9. Which of the
following did Steven Horvath discover during his research?
A Canoe
design was less important than human strength
B New
research methods had to be developed for use in canoes
C Navigators became very tired on the longest
voyages
D Human energy may have been used to assist
sailing canoes
10. What is the
writer’s opinion of p Wall Garrard’s research?
A He
is disappointed it was conducted in the laboratory
B He
is impressed by the originality of the techniques used
C He
is surprised it was used to help linguists with their research
D He
is concerned that the islands studied are long distances apart
Questions 11-14
Complete
each sentence with the correct ending, A-F, below.
Write
the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 11-14 on your answer sheet.
11..................... One limitation in the information produced
by all of this research is that it
12..................... The best thing about this type of research
13..................... The most important achievement of
traditional navigators
14..................... The migration of people from Asia to the
Pacific
A was the variety of experimental
techniques used
B was not of interest to young
islanders today
c was not conclusive evidence in
support of a single theory
D
was being able to change their practices
when necessary
E
was the first time humans intentionally
crossed an ocean
F
was the speed with which it was conducted
Solution:
|
1. YES |
8. B |
|
2. NO |
9. D |
|
3. YES |
10. B |
|
4. YES |
11. C |
|
5. NOT GIVEN |
12. A |
|
6. A |
13. D |
|
7. C |
14. E |
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