Manutea Owen is a hero on his home island of Huahine. His ancestors took over nearly every island in the South Pacific Ocean in what was perhaps the greatest achievement before humans went to the moon. Only recently have scientists begun to understand where these amazing sailors came from, and how, with simple boats and no navigation equipment, they could manage to find hundreds of distant islands that cover nearly a third of the globe. This expansion into the Pacific was achieved by two wonderful peoples: the Lapita and the Polynesians.
How did the Lapita and early Polynesian pioneers do this? Very little evidence remains to help scientists understand their great sailing skills. However, with little evidence, scientists have been able to develop some theories about the secrets of these explorers' success.
Sailors have always relied upon the so-called trade winds, winds that blow steadily (匀速地) and in predictable directions over the ocean's surface. Geoff Irwin, a professor of archeology (考古学) notes that the Lapita's expansion into the Pacific was eastward, against steady trade winds. Sailing against the wind, he argues, may have been the key to their success.
Athol Anderson of the Australian National University believes that they may also have been lucky—helped by a weather phenomenon known as EI Nino. E1 Nino occurs in the Pacific Ocean when the surface water temperature is unusually high. It affects world weather in a variety of ways, but one of its effects is to cause trade winds in the South Pacific to weaken or to change direction and blow to the east. Scientists believe that E1 Nino phenomena were unusually frequent around the time of the Lapita expansion, and again when early Polynesians began their even more distant journeys.
The success of the Lapita and the Polynesian may have been because of their own sailing skills, of reverse (反向的) trade winds, of a mixture of both, or even of facts still unknown. But it is certain that by the time Europeans came to the Pacific, nearly every piece of land, hundreds of islands in all, had already been discovered by the Lapita and the Polynesians.
