Did they navigate to known destinations, or were the island groups they settled hit upon by accident? Whichever, it is clear that the Polynesian sailors and navigators knew how to cross open ocean in open vessels. There is still some disagreement among historians as to whether the Polynesians knew where they were going. We have a good idea what these ancient catamarans looked like: see figure 1.1. From these pinpoints of land in the South Pacific the Polynesians radiated out to New Zealand, Easter Island, and Hawaii, ending their long journeys in about 1000 CE. The Polynesians spread eastward to the Solomon Islands, on to Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, and then to the Cook, Society, and Marquesas groups of islands. The vessels built by these intrepid colonizers were 50-60 ft long, each with a deck of crossbeams that was lashed to the two hulls, and supported perhaps 25 people (more, for the largest vessels), plus provisions. The cats that we know today more closely resemble those developed by Polynesian people, who spread across Oceania on large ocean-going catamarans from their origins in Asia or New Guinea about 3,000 years ago. The word "catamaran" is Tamil, and these vessels have long been associated with the state of Tamil Nadu in southern India cats have been recorded there since the fifth century CE. Westerners first learned of cats from an English adventurer in India, who wrote about them in the 1690s. The traditional cats consisted of a double hull of logs connected by a rigid deck or platform. Catamarans have been around for at least three millennia.
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