Polynesians
reach Hawaii before 460 AD. Easter Island is reached around
690 AD.
Malay migrants are thought to have settled in parts of the Philippines,
bringing with them elements of Indian culture.
While it is often said the Aboriginals of Australia had no technology,
they had expert knowledge of the plants around them and how
they could be used. These plants served their purposes so well,
they never had the need to use pottery or metals. The long leaves
of sedges, rushes and lilies were collected to make baskets
and mats, and soaked and beaten to free the fibres to make string.
The bark of trees made buckets, dishes and shields. River red-gum
bark was particularly good for making canoes, and old scarred
'canoe trees' can still be seen. Some rice-flower shrubs have
such strong fibres on the outside of the stem that they were
used to make fine nets in which to collect bogong moths to eat.
The wood of blackwood, being very hard and close-grained, was
used for spear-throwers and shields. The bark made a good medicine
for rheumatism. The hard wood of she-oak was much used for making
boomerangs, shields and clubs. In Wyrie Swamp, South Australia,
archaeologists found a boomerang 10,000 years old, made from
she-oak wood. Tree sap from gum trees was used to glue axe blades
onto handles.
Mattang
This
is a mattang, the Polynesian "compass". Like many
other sailors, the Polynesians used the sun and stars, cloud
formations and flights of birds to navigate over large expanses
of open ocean (can you guess why clouds and birds could be helpful
in finding land?). But the Polynesians also learned how to read
wave patterns. Throw a stone into the water and what happens--the
stone sinks of course, but circles of waves are made centred
on where the stone fell. In much the same way, waves in the
sea hit an island and are reflected back. The mattang is a tool
showing all the basic patterns that waves can form when they
bounce off land. An experienced Polynesian sailor would be able
to read the wave patterns and tell which direction to go to
find land. Stationary cloud formations, caused by temperature
changes when cool sea air passes over warmer land areas, and
the presence of many birds, show land is not too far away even
if it cannot yet be seen.
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1,500 years ago
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years ago / 4,000 years ago
/ 5,000 years ago / 10,000
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