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FITCHBURG -- The first Hawaiians came from Polynesia around 500 A.D., traveling 1,300 miles over open ocean in outrigger canoes. In the late 1970s, scientists wanted to re-enact that incredible journey, which the Polynesians made without sextants or any other of the navigational instruments Western mariners depend on.
The scientists looked everywhere in Hawaii and throughout the Pacific islands for someone who could captain a canoe, unaided, across the Pacific. In Micronesia, they found a very old man named Mau, who was teaching young people about sailing. Mau could put his hand over the side of a canoe, feel the currents with his fingertips and he knew where he was. He could taste the water, the saline content, and knew where he was. He could look at cloud formations over the distant horizon and knew where he was.
Mau had never been to Hawaii, nor to Tahiti. Nevertheless, in the outrigger Hokule'a, he set sail across the vast Pacific. The scientists, in a ship equipped with modern instruments, trailed several miles behind in case he ran into trouble. He never did. Just by reading the Earth and the ocean, Mau guided Hokule'a safely to Hawaii.
"That kind of knowledge of the Earth is largely lost," said Roger Dell, education director at Fitchburg Art Museum, in a lecture at the museum Monday. "There are only a very few people now who can do that."
The slide lecture, titled "Captain Cook's Maps and his `Artificial Curiosities,' " linked items from two ongoing exhibits at the museum: "Round Earth, Flat Paper," a study of maps...