Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

[yuku@mail.trends.ca (Yuri Kuchinsky)]

Frank Joseph Yurco (fjyurco@midway.uchicago.edu) wrote:

	...

: There is even more evidence, but these are the most impressive items. 
: So, as the one poster noted, he would not be encouraged to navigate a
: balsa raft across the Pacific, but I would not hesitate to join a voyage
: like the Micronesian Pilot navigator made from Hawaii to Tahiti, for,
: as one Pacific sailor noted, a good Micronesian or Polynesian navigator
: could sail circles around a European or American navigator with the most
: up-to-date navigational aids. Yes, there's a lot of truth in this
: assessment, for modern hi-tech equipment has a penchant for breaking down
: just where help is unavailable. So, the Micronesian or Polynesian
: navigator with his knowledge based on star movements, oceanic swells and
: currents, and patterns of bird flights and cloud formations, does have
: the edge. Can Yuri, or anyone else demonstrate that the Amerindian rafters
: had such navigational skills? 

Frank,

Thank you for your informative post. There's still a story coming from
reliable historical sources about the journey of the Inca across the
ocean. The truth of that story can be seen from two pieces of information: 

1. The sailing directions to the Easter Island given to the Spanish by
Amerindians at the time were exact. 

2. The arrogant Spanish colonialists believed the Amerindian accounts, and
acted accordingly, by sailing to investigate further. 

Please indicate any errors of fact or logic you may see above. 

Best regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky in Toronto -=O=- http://www.io.org/~yuku

It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than
to put out on the troubled seas of thought -=O=- John K. Galbraith