50 pages • 1 hour read
Wade DavisThe Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 2Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “The Wayfinders”
Polynesia is “the largest culture sphere ever brought into being by the human imagination” (35). This “single cultural realm of closely related languages and shared historical vision” (43) covers 25 million square kilometers and tens of thousands of Pacific islands sometimes separated by stretches of open sea wider than continents. The development of such a widespread yet homogenous civilization was only possible through the incredible seafaring prowess of the Polynesian people. As Davis writes, “Navigation fundamentally defined the Polynesian identity” (51).
History has not always appreciated this prowess. When the Spaniards landed in Polynesia in the 16th century, they were immediately perplexed by “how such a primitive people could have accomplished so much” (39), including extensive irrigation systems, wide-ranging trade routes, and a complex hierarchy and economy, alongside incredible sea-faring ability. This began a tradition of crediting Polynesia’s settlement to accident or through South America. Such theories survived until the 1970s.
These theories “denied the culture its greatest accomplishment” (47). At the time of Spanish colonization, Polynesian navigation was superior to that of the Europeans. Without the chronometer to measure longitude, European vessels had to sail along coastlines for safety. Polynesian navigators sailed vast expanses of open ocean in simple boats using precise observational skills and results-based-repetition, techniques “not unlike those of the scientist” (52).
Today, Polynesia’s navigational prowess is embodied by the Hokule’a and its navigator, Davis’s personal friend Nainoa Thompson. The Hokule’a is a 62-foot, traditionally built, double-hulled catamaran first launched in 1975. Crewed by only 10, this revivalist sailing vessel traveled all over the globe with absolutely no modern navigation tools.
The work of wayfinders defies modern reliance on technology. Their navigation is based on deep astronomical knowledge, intense sensitivity to ocean wave patterns and deep-sea currents, and precise observation of atmospheric and animal behavior. Wayfinders can read clouds and patterns of air, aspects of light on stars shining through the atmosphere, or their bearings across the sky to predict the ocean’s behavior. Their vessels are part of this science: the stern of the Hokule’a is marked with incisions that allow the navigator to take the bearings of stars by day through memory of their location. Most impressive of all wayfinder abilities is their skill at “dead reckoning” (60). To keep their course wayfinders must memorize all events that occur in the ocean around them between each known reference point, which requires staying awake 22 hours a day while navigating.
The Hokule’a bears an entire culture’s hope for regeneration: “There is a strong sense throughout the islands that as long as the Hokule’a sails the culture of the navigators will survive” (63). Thompson refers to Hokule’a as “both a sacred canoe and the spaceship of the ancestors” (63). The tradition of wayfinding is hallowed to the people of Polynesia, passed down directly to Thompson from the great navigator Mau, and from Thompson to his protégé Ka’iulani.
We tend to reduce indigenous peoples to false primitivism. This view forgets everything the New World provided modern civilization, including the foundational components of many modern medicines and a range of domesticated plants. The father of modern cultural anthropology, Franz Boas (67), recognized the wealth of knowledge engrained in each culture of the world. He argued that anthropologists should endeavor “to understand the perspective of the other, to learn the way they perceive the world, and if at all possible the very nature of their thoughts” (68) before making a judgment on them.
Trade on the Kula ring, a complex economy of prestige goods circulating the Polynesian ocean, is an example of incredible cultural advancement among the Polynesians. A trade system of purely symbolic objects—shell necklaces and arm bands with no utilitarian value—the Kula ring established relationships over great distances among peoples of different languages, facilitating the movement important utilitarian goods. The system also provided a framework for prestige display important to chiefly hierarchy.
Davis recounts a trip sailing through the Polynesian Trobriand islands, a circuitous journey from Fiji to Papua New Guinea, along the route of the Kula ring. After hearing about a party of Trobriand men currently stranded off of Bodaluna, the easternmost limit of the Kula ring, Davis was impressed by the patience and bravery these people likely needed to establish their great naval civilization.
Chapter 2 Analysis
Davis’s second lecture returns to the juxtaposition of Western and indigenous cultures established in the first. In the first lecture, Western and indigenous communities were separately described but implicitly compared. Now, Europeans who embody the colonial and industrial worldview Davis argues against—here the Spanish—are shown in direct contact with an advanced indigenous society—the Polynesians. The chapter describes the Spanish as inept, “confounded” (38) comparably to the Polynesians, inferior both in their navigational ability and their culturally elitist theorizations of Polynesian migration which, despite being founded on “non-evidence” (45), persisted for centuries.
Forgoing discussion of Polynesia’s colonial history, Davis provides an in-depth account of their sea-faring culture. This is the first occurrence of Davis describing a personal anthropological experience, this time his journey on the Hokule’a with his “good friend, Nainoa Thompson” (35). Davis’s choice to describe Polynesian culture through a personal narrative has many functions. First, it allows Davis to provide a detailed depiction of the navigational practices of Polynesian wayfinders. Second, it allows Davis to foreground their culture as living and vibrant. The wayfinders’ culture is not a primitive island culture extinguished by the march of history but a system of maintained cultural skill that endures to this day. The opposite of primitive, Thompson is a member of the modern Polynesian Voyaging Society, which is endorsed by the Hawaiian government.
By recalling time spent with Thompson aboard the Hokule’a, Davis shows that Polynesian wayfinding is far from obsolete; it has found a place within the modern world. Furthermore, the purposeful revival of this culture through the launching of the Hokule’a shows that this culture is comprised of agents working in tandem with larger structures of power—reminding us again that the forces that work to destroy indigenous cultures are not the inevitable progress of history but “identifiable” agents (167).
The lyricism and imagery of Davis’s writing is again on display in this lecture, most effectively in Davis’s retelling of his voyage on the Hokule’a. He describes the sky as “still clear, the ocean black, the heavens dominated by the innumerable silences of the stars. The Hokule’a lumbered into the swells” (56). Davis uses this language to show readers the beauty of the Polynesian experience of the world and the ability of our own cultures to appreciate it.
Using anthropological analysis combined with personal narrative and lyricism, Davis establishes connections from these peoples, through himself, to the audience. This allows readers to imagine these cultures as distinct groups with agencies, histories, and humanity. It reminds us of our own distant pasts and our equality as humans. This deepens the sense of tragedy evoked by descriptions of the destruction of these cultures and their homelands.
Davis’s style is somewhat disarming; it is not fully scientific, anthropological, historical, or narrative. Instead it fuses all these styles to emphasize the beauty of the worlds’ myriad cultures. This mixed style reflects the wandering quality of Davis’s writing: In taking readers on a journey into these landscapes, he sometimes loses the thread of specific arguments or connects tangentially to other topics before finishing his first point. This is perhaps best evidenced in his shifting discussion of Franz Boas and Bronislar Malinowski (69), the function of the Kula ring, and then his own musings on the character of Polynesian people.
