Pacificnavigation and voyaging
How people migrated to the Pacific islands
原文
The many tiny islands of the Pacific Oceanhad no human population until ancestors of today’s islanders sailed fromSoutheast Asia in ocean-going canoes approximately 2,000 years ago. At thepresent time, the debate continues about exactly how they migrated such vastdistances across the ocean, without any of the modern technologies we take forgranted.
Although the romantic vision of some earlytwentieth-century writers of fleets of heroic navigators simultaneously settingsail had come to be considered by later investigators to be exaggerated, noconsidered assessment of Pacific voyaging was forthcoming until 1956 when theAmerican historian Andrew Sharp published his research. Sharp challenged the‘heroic vision’ by asserting that the expertise of the navigators was limited,and that the settlement of the islands was not systematic, being more dependenton good fortune by drifting canoes. Sharp’s theory was widely challenged, anddeservedly so. If nothing else, however, it did spark renewed interest in thetopic and precipitated valuable new research.
Since the 1960s a wealth of investigationshas been conducted, and most of them, thankfully, have been of the‘non-armchair’ variety. While it would be wrong to denigrate all ‘armchair’research - that based on an examination of available published materials - ithas turned out that so little progress had been made in the area of Pacificvoyaging because most writers relied on the same old sources - travellers’journals or missionary narratives compiled by unskilled observers. After Sharp,this began to change, and researchers conducted most of their investigationsnot in libraries, but in the field.
In 1965, David Lewis, a physician andexperienced yachtsman, set to work using his own unique philosophy: he took theyacht he had owned for many years and navigated through the islands in order tocontact those men who still find their way at sea using traditional methods. Hethen accompanied these men, in their traditional canoes, on test voyages fromwhich all modern instruments were banished from sight, though Lewis secretlyused them to confirm the navigator’s calculations. His most famous such voyagewas a return trip of around 1,000 nautical miles between two islands inmid•ocean. Far from drifting, as proposed by Sharp, Lewis found that ancientnavigators would have known which course to steer by memorizing which starsrose and set in certain positions along the horizon and this gave them fixeddirections by which to steer their boats.
The geographer Edwin Doran followed a quitedifferent approach. He was interested in obtaining exact data on canoe sailingperformance, and to that end employed the latest electronic instrumentation.Doran travelled on board traditional sailing canoes in some of the most remoteparts of the Pacific, all the while using his instruments to record canoespeeds in different wind strengths - from gales to calms - the angle canoescould sail relative to the wind. In the process, he provided the first reallyprecise attributes of traditional sailing canoes.
A further contribution was made by StevenHorvath. As a physiologist, Horvath’s interest was not in navigation techniquesor in canoes, but in the physical capabilities of the men themselves. Byadapting standard physiological techniques, Horvath was able to calculate the energyexpenditure required to paddle canoes of this sort at times when there was nowind to fill the sails, or when the wind was contrary. He concluded thatpaddles, or perhaps long oars, could indeed have propelled for long distanceswhat were primarily sailing vessels.
Finally, a team led by p Wall Garrardconducted important research, in this case by making investigations whileremaining safely in the laboratory. Wall Garrard’s unusual method was to usethe findings of linguists who had studied the languages of the Pacific islands,many of which are remarkably similar although the islands where they are spokenare sometimes thousands of kilometres apart. Clever adaptation of computersimulation techniques pioneered in other disciplines allowed him to produceconvincing models suggesting the migrations were indeed systematic, but notsimultaneous. Wall Garrard proposed the migrations should be seen not as asingle journey made by a massed fleet of canoes, but as a series of ever moreambitious voyages, each pushing further into the unknown ocean.
What do we learn about Pacific navigationand voyaging from this research? Quite correctly, none of the researchers triedto use their findings to prove one theory or another; experiments such as thesecannot categorically confirm or negate a hypothesis. The strength of thisresearch lay in the range of methodologies employed. When we splice togetherthese findings we can propose that traditional navigators used a variety ofcanoe types, sources of water and navigation techniques, and it was thisadaptability which was their greatest accomplishment. These navigators observedthe conditions prevailing at sea at the time a voyage was made and alteredtheir techniques accordingly. Furthermore, the canoes of the navigators werenot drifting helplessly at sea but were most likely part of a systematicmigration; as such, the Pacific peoples were able to view the ocean as anavenue, not a barrier, to communication before any other race on Earth.Finally, one unexpected but most welcome consequence of this research has beena renaissance in the practice of traditional voyaging. In some groups ofislands in the Pacific today young people are resurrecting the skills of theirancestors, when a few decades ago it seemed they would be lost forever.
Question 27-31
Do the following statements agree with theclaims of the writer in Reading Passage? In boxes 27-31 on youranswer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with theclaims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts theclaims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if is impossible to say whatthe writer thinks about this
27 .............The Pacific islandswere uninhabited when migrants arrived by sea from Southeast Asia
28 ...................Andrew Sharp wasthe first person to write about the migrants to islanders
29 ....................Andrew Sharpbelieved migratory voyages were based on more on luck than skill
30 ...................Despite beingcontroversial, Andrew Sharp’s research had positive results
31 ...................Edwin Dorandisagreed with the findings of Lewis’s research
Questions 32-36
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 32-36 onyour answer sheet.
32 David Lewis’s research was differentbecause
A he observed traditional navigators at work
B he conducted test voyages using his ownyacht
C he carried no modern instruments on testvoyages
D he spoke the same language as theislanders he sailed with
33 What did David Lewis’s researchdiscover about traditional navigators?
A They used the sun and moon to find theirposition
B They could not sail further than about1,000 nautical miles
C They knew which direction they weresailing in
D They were able to drift for long distances
34 What are we told about Edwin Doran’sresearch?
A Data were collected after the canoes hadreturned to land
B Canoe characteristics were recorded usingmodern instruments
C Research was conducted in the most denselypopulated regions
D Navigators were not allowed to see theinstruments Doran used
35 Which of the following did StevenHorvath discover during his research?
A Canoe design was less important than humanstrength
B New research methods had to be developedfor use in canoes
C Navigators became very tired on thelongest voyages
D Human energy may have been used to assistsailing canoes
36 What is the writer’s opinion of pWall Garrard’s research?
A He is disappointed it was conducted in thelaboratory
B He is impressed by the originality of thetechniques used
C He is surprised it was used to helplinguists with their research
D He is concerned that the islands studiedare long distances apart
Questions37-40
Complete each sentence with the correctending, A-F, below. Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 37-40 onyour answer sheet.
37 .......................Onelimitation in the information produced by all of this research is that it
38 .......................The bestthing about this type of research
39 .......................The mostimportant achievement of traditional navigators
40 .......................The migrationof people from Asia to the Pacific
A was the variety of experimental techniquesused
B was not of interest to young islanderstoday
C was not conclusive evidence in support ofa single theory
D was being able to change their practiceswhen necessary
E was the first time humans intentionallycrossed an ocean
F was the speed with which it was conducted
Answer keys
27. YES
28. NO
29. YES
30. YES
31. NOT GIVEN
32. A
33. C
34. B
35. D
36. B
37. C
38. A
39. D
40. E
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发表于 2026-1-7 10:25:17
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