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Decidedly the most impressive and comprehensive wayfinding and navigation techniques of the ancient world were employed by the first inhabitants of Polynesia. This corner of the Pacific Ocean is made up of over 1,000 small islands, making sea travel an absolute necessity for fostering trade and communication between groups.
Navigation is one of the main functions that allow us to traverse the world around us. And the central tool of navigation is wayfinding. This process has been used ostensibly since the beginning of the human race, and continues to be employed on a daily basis by everyone on our planet.
Wayfinding as a concept is involved with every level of the human experience, from intrinsic spatial instincts, to learned techniques of memorizing landmarks, to the use of external tools like maps and GPS systems. For as long as we move through the physical world, wayfinding will be the invaluable tool with which we depart and arrive.
Read on to learn all about our brain's most important tool and how it has evolved over time.
Under this definition, wayfinding has been used since the dawn of the human race. Hunter-gatherers tracking herds of game, migrating as the seasons changed, and traveling long stretches each day to source and forage food used various wayfinding techniques on a daily basis.
The term "wayfinding" can refer to any number of cognitive processes, architectural techniques, or technologies that help humans find their way around the world. At its core, wayfinding is the way our brains figure out how to get from point A to point B.
Almost every island was home to its own sailors' guild. These guilds and their members set the standard for wayfaring and boatbuilding, and were responsible for supporting society in times of famine, heavy rains, and other hardships.
One of the primary methods of navigating the labyrinthine waters of Polynesia was through the tracking of birds. The impressive Polynesian knowledge of local birds included recognizing the native islands of specific bird species, their daily fishing habits, and migration patterns. Those sailing the 2,655 miles (about 4,270 km) from Tahiti to New Zealand, for example, could follow flocks of long-tailed cuckoos (pictured) from shore to shore.
According to these oral traditions, Polynesia took the form of an octopus, with the island of Ra'iatea as the central "head." This octopus also took a literal form in Polynesian folktales, alternatively referred to as the Grand Octopus of Prosperity, the Beginning-of-heaven-and-Earth, or the legendary Octopus of Muturangi.
Thought to have started their journey into the southern Pacific Ocean by way of southeastern China, the first peoples of Polynesia quickly became the best ocean navigators in the world. The seas were inextricably intertwined with Polynesian society, commerce, and religion.
A more conventional technique to ocean navigation, one that would eventually be adopted by ancient sailors around the world, was mapping out the stars in the night sky. By connecting a series of stars that stayed close to the horizon from destination to destination, intricate mental star maps could be used to travel from any given island to another. This was even used to calculate a boat's elevation in relation to its destination.
Even during the day or on cloudy nights, the sky held the answers to one's journey. The minute differences between the reflection of light off of deep waters and shallow waters can cause subtle, almost imperceptible changes in the color of the horizon. Navigators could use these colors to point themselves toward land and even identify specific islands.
One would be hard-pressed to find an ancient culture more deeply connected to the seas than the Polynesians. Sailors could simply stare into the waters and decode their general location. The long island chains across Polynesia cause disturbances in the rhythm of the seas, and navigators familiar with the area could differentiate between the rhythms caused by different islands and atolls.
Even long stretches away from the nearest island, navigators could use sea swells, caused by the transfer of energy from the winds to the waters, to point themselves in the right direction. Navigators would create swell charts (pictured) to depict the influence of islands, marked by shells, on the ocean's rhythms. These charts are some of the only physical aids ever used by these ancient navigators.
A legendary and still-unexplained phenomenon known in Polynesia as te lapa is still used to this day to help sailors find their way. Te lapa is described as a bright, luminous light that dances on or just beneath the surface of the waters close to an island's shore. Usually seen around 100 miles (160 km) from the coast, this brilliant, intriguing light has been observed by multiple scientists, none of whom have been able to agree on a scientific explanation. Some hypotheses point towards changes in the water's composition, deep ground swells, or bioluminescence (pictured).
Whether Polynesians made it all the way to the Americas or not is hotly debated, but there is strong physical evidence that they did. Carbon evidence dating back to 1000 CE of sweet potatoes, native only to South America, have been found around Polynesia. The most popular theory of how these spuds crossed the ocean is that they were brought back to Polynesia by navigators and traders who traveled between the two continents. Only with their incredibly sophisticated wayfinding skills could they have accomplished this feat so long before the European Age of Exploration.
Once a route has been decided upon, the rest of your journey will be spent monitoring your route. Modern pedestrians and travelers, just like ancient Polynesian navigators, use a series of landmarks or familiar, gradual changes of surroundings to make sure they are still on the right track, or to correct themselves if they aren't.
Scholars and experts have identified the four eternal principles of wayfinding. The first is orientation. Figuring out where you are is necessary before you can find out how to get to where you want to be. Landmarks and knowledge of one's environment are the best and most common tools for orientation.
At the end of any journey, it is of course important to be able to recognize your destination. Being familiar with your destination ensures you don't go too far, lest you have to backtrack, wasting time and energy.
The second step is called "route decision." Once you find out where you are, the next consideration is always how exactly to get to your destination. There are usually numerous options for how to find your way, but knowledge and mental mapping will usually influence which route you deem the most efficient.
The face of wayfinding has changed drastically in the centuries since the golden age of Polynesian navigation, but the principles are still the same. Knowledge of one's surroundings, the use of landmarks and other familiar sensations, and collective organization are the pillars of human navigation through the cities, seas, and skies of the modern world.
As civilization and technology have advanced, more and more of the burden of wayfinding has fallen upon external tools. From maps to street signs, GPS devices to smartphones, less and less navigational information has had to be stored in one's brain.
Landmarks such as the Sydney Opera House, the Empire State Building, or the Eiffel Tower serve as indispensable tools when finding your way through an unfamiliar city. As landmarks are collected and stored in one's memory, mental maps become clearer or more comprehensive.
Hundreds of years ago, residents of the great cities of the Old World had to memorize and store an immense amount of information regarding their home and surrounding areas. Today, traversing urban environments has never been easier, thanks to intuitive city planning, street signs, public maps, and wayfinding technology.
The term "wayfinding" was first used in an architectural sense by Kevin A. Lynch in his 1960 book 'The Image of the City.' He provided a new definition for the word: ""a consistent use and organization of definite sensory cues from the external environment." Lynch also wrote out the five elements of modern architectural wayfinding: paths, edges, districts, nodes (geographical intersections such as town squares or train terminals), and landmarks.
It is also the responsibility of planners and architects to make important areas easy to navigate. Hospitals, for example, must be intuitively built and properly mapped to make them accessible and easily navigable for those in a race against time.
Since the publishing of Lynch's seminal book, a new additional term, "wayshowing," has also emerged. Wayshowing refers to signage and landmarks intentionally added to an area to assist in wayfinding. Without wayshowing, trips through an unfamiliar airport or a busy, expansive shopping mall would be even more stressful than they already are.
As the art of architecture has grown and adapted to an ever-evolving landscape, wayfinding has become an invaluable tool in the construction of buildings and neighborhoods.
As time pushes onward, the gap between independent wayfinding and technology-assisted navigation grows thinner and thinner. Today, wayfinding is usually a collaboration between our five human senses, handheld technologies, and the well-outlined environments of the modern world. Tomorrow, the three might be indistinguishable.
See also: These animals travel the farthest
Wayfinding tools have gradually made navigation easier, but have simultaneously diminished our natural wayfinding abilities. With GPS-enabled smartphones in the pockets of millions of people around the world, we rarely get truly lost anymore. But this also coddles the spatial navigation center of the brain's hippocampus.
For thousands of years, up until relatively recently, the vast expanse of Polynesian wayfinding techniques were kept as precious secrets, and only relayed from generation to generation through oral traditions such as songs, poems, and stories. These "guild secrets" were for Polynesian ears only up until modern times, when scholars and historians began to record and publish the ancient techniques of Polynesian navigators.
The exact extent of the travels undertaken by Polynesian wayfinders is up for debate, but radiocarbon evidence of Polynesian settlements have been found as far as the sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands. One Polynesian folktale tells the story of Ui-te-Rangiora, a navigator from the Cook Islands who sailed south until he found "a place of bitter cold where rock-like structures rose from a solid sea." Some experts believe that this is a description of the Ross Ice Shelf, on the edge of mainland Antarctica. If true, this would make Ui-te-Rangiora the first human in history to discover the icy southern continent.
From seas to city streets: Finding your way via wayfinding
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Navigation is one of the main functions that allow us to traverse the world around us. And the central tool of navigation is wayfinding. This process has been used ostensibly since the beginning of the human race, and continues to be employed on a daily basis by everyone on our planet.
Wayfinding as a concept is involved with every level of the human experience, from intrinsic spatial instincts, to learned techniques of memorizing landmarks, to the use of external tools like maps and GPS systems. For as long as we move through the physical world, wayfinding will be the invaluable tool with which we depart and arrive.
Read on to learn all about our brain's most important tool and how it has evolved over time.