374
21 A Consilience of Evidence
Polynesia, which has been regarded as the only base for expansion when warm
conditions returned.
Physiology and oceanography suggest a different early history for the Spice
Island ancestors of the Polynesians. To counter the risk of hypothermia on longdistance voyages Spice Island mariners needed to ensure the fastest possible
passage. Their best option as explorers and colonizers was to exploit strong warm
currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm Pool; to undertake long voyages only
in warm global periods when sea surface temperatures were high; to avoid west–east
sailing against the trade winds and currents of the southern Pacific; to exploit following winds (monsoonal winds in the Indian Ocean and El Niño northerlies when
following the East Australian Current south to New Zealand); and when possible to
sail at the onset of an El Niño event when SSTs were at their warmest.
The patterns for exploration, trading and settlement in the Pacific and southern Indian Oceans predicted by our paradigm possess a logic dictated by human
physiology (the need to counter hypothermia); dictated by the persistent economic
motivation of spice trading and later conceivably of rare plant trading; dictated by
the geography and maritime history of the Spice Islands (located within or close to
the boundaries of the West Pacific Warm Pool); and dictated by the oceanographic
nature and function of the West Pacific Warm Pool and of its outflowing currents.
The sailing and exploration strategies learnt by Spice Island mariners in what we
have described as their West Pacific Warm Pool long-distance voyaging nursery and
transferred into two cooler oceans dictated the exploration paths the Spice Islanders
would follow and thus the lands they would first discover and settle.
Our conception of Polynesian prehistory is transformed by recognition of the
oceanographic significance of the West Pacific Warm Pool and of its role in shaping
the history of oceanic migration. The paths, sequence, timing and range of oceanic
migrations were determined by the choice of three of its four major currents as ocean
highways. Migration paths were determined by the paths of the currents themselves,
the range of these paths determined by the currents’ continental limits.
Sequence and timing are more difficult to unravel. Spice trading was probably
an early driving factor. We have suggested that a trading route to Japan may have
been earliest, the settlement of Palau nearly 6,000 years ago a conceivable indicator
for the establishment of such a route. But possibly 2,000 years separates a conjectured early route to Japan from the establishment of the Cinnamon Route. The
difference in the skills required to sail the latter suggests a considerable time lag. In
place of the much shorter distance to Japan and a voyage almost wholly within the
protective warmth of the West Pacific Warm Pool, with multiple potential landfalls
in Micronesia, the Cinnamon Route required the transference of skills into a colder
ocean. It required crossing an ocean stretch of almost 4,000 km without landfall, a
distance equivalent to the total distance from the Spice Islands to Japan. The islands
of Japan had long been inhabited. Madagascar and New Zealand were more enticing to migrants: they offered settlers the largest uninhabited islands in the Pacific
and Indian Oceans that could be reached by fast ocean currents flowing out from the
West Pacific Warm Pool. Migration to New Zealand involved sailing a distance more
than twice that from the Spice Islands to Japan, though only two-thirds that from the
21 A Consilience of Evidence
Polynesia, which has been regarded as the only base for expansion when warm
conditions returned.
Physiology and oceanography suggest a different early history for the Spice
Island ancestors of the Polynesians. To counter the risk of hypothermia on longdistance voyages Spice Island mariners needed to ensure the fastest possible
passage. Their best option as explorers and colonizers was to exploit strong warm
currents flowing out of the West Pacific Warm Pool; to undertake long voyages only
in warm global periods when sea surface temperatures were high; to avoid west–east
sailing against the trade winds and currents of the southern Pacific; to exploit following winds (monsoonal winds in the Indian Ocean and El Niño northerlies when
following the East Australian Current south to New Zealand); and when possible to
sail at the onset of an El Niño event when SSTs were at their warmest.
The patterns for exploration, trading and settlement in the Pacific and southern Indian Oceans predicted by our paradigm possess a logic dictated by human
physiology (the need to counter hypothermia); dictated by the persistent economic
motivation of spice trading and later conceivably of rare plant trading; dictated by
the geography and maritime history of the Spice Islands (located within or close to
the boundaries of the West Pacific Warm Pool); and dictated by the oceanographic
nature and function of the West Pacific Warm Pool and of its outflowing currents.
The sailing and exploration strategies learnt by Spice Island mariners in what we
have described as their West Pacific Warm Pool long-distance voyaging nursery and
transferred into two cooler oceans dictated the exploration paths the Spice Islanders
would follow and thus the lands they would first discover and settle.
Our conception of Polynesian prehistory is transformed by recognition of the
oceanographic significance of the West Pacific Warm Pool and of its role in shaping
the history of oceanic migration. The paths, sequence, timing and range of oceanic
migrations were determined by the choice of three of its four major currents as ocean
highways. Migration paths were determined by the paths of the currents themselves,
the range of these paths determined by the currents’ continental limits.
Sequence and timing are more difficult to unravel. Spice trading was probably
an early driving factor. We have suggested that a trading route to Japan may have
been earliest, the settlement of Palau nearly 6,000 years ago a conceivable indicator
for the establishment of such a route. But possibly 2,000 years separates a conjectured early route to Japan from the establishment of the Cinnamon Route. The
difference in the skills required to sail the latter suggests a considerable time lag. In
place of the much shorter distance to Japan and a voyage almost wholly within the
protective warmth of the West Pacific Warm Pool, with multiple potential landfalls
in Micronesia, the Cinnamon Route required the transference of skills into a colder
ocean. It required crossing an ocean stretch of almost 4,000 km without landfall, a
distance equivalent to the total distance from the Spice Islands to Japan. The islands
of Japan had long been inhabited. Madagascar and New Zealand were more enticing to migrants: they offered settlers the largest uninhabited islands in the Pacific
and Indian Oceans that could be reached by fast ocean currents flowing out from the
West Pacific Warm Pool. Migration to New Zealand involved sailing a distance more
than twice that from the Spice Islands to Japan, though only two-thirds that from the