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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure how much tech you need. More like planning and luck.

Think about the vast ocean distances the Polynesian people covered, and it's my understanding that their level of technology was less than the Romans. Though I'm not really knowledgeable in that area.

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They were damn good navigators though. The level of technology of their boats were in some ways vastly superior to the Europeans who traveled to the South Pacific.

Remember that "technology" isn't a generic "I'm better at it than you are" kind of thing. Different societies have different levels of technology depending on what their needs are. Polynesians needed to cross enormous distances, so they were well developed in that area.

If you have navigation technology and knowledge it switches from being luck to routine. Accurate clocks and maps of ocean currents make vast ocean distances much smaller.

So, your point is that the Romans could've easily crossed to the Americas because they had maps of the Atlantic's currents?

The Polynesians probably even made it to South America; they had sweet potatoes, native to the Americas, before European contact, and their word for it is very similar to the Quechua.

Polynesian sailing and navigation technology probably beats Roman on the open ocean.

The Mediterranean is warm, pleasant and calm (boats did and do get wrecked by storms, but it's a much smaller risk). Distances between landing sites are short. If the wind dies, then it's feasible to row. You can stay in sight of land for travel to most destinations.

The Atlantic and Pacific are wild and dangerous.

Polynesians never crossed large open oceans. They island hopped.

The longest distance between islands is longer than the shortest distance between Africa and South America. So it’s at least possible with relatively primitive technology.

Polynesians had and still have extremely sophisticated stellar and solar navigation techniques (as well as deep observational knowledge of oceans and marine life) that far exceeded recorded European techniques until the advent of tools like astrolabes and sextants in the 1700s, as far as the extent of travel distances. There has been growing evidence of Polynesian contact with South America, including the presence of sweet potatoes (South American origin) which may have just dispersed somehow westward over the Pacific as seeds. But chicken bones (a South Asian origin) have been radio carbon dated to the 1300s in Chile. And a Polynesian settlement in the Auckland islands in the sub-antarctic dating to the 13th century has been found.

The distance between New Zealand and Tahiti (the approximate origin of the founding population of NZ) is around 2600 miles, longer than the minimum distance between Africa and South America.

You’re not wrong about island hopping but the last hops in the Polynesian expansion - Hawai’i, Rapa Nui (Easter Island), and New Zealand were incredibly remote.

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