Polynesian navigation device - photo

[Crusty]

My dad was in the central Pacific in WWII and he told me of an experiment that the Navy conducted with a native navigator. They put him on a PBY blindfolded and flew him all over the region, stopping at various places and asking him to point in the direction back to his home. They found that he was always within a few degrees even though they took him to places that he said that he had never been before. Those navigators had a way of analyzing the wave intersections and were able to deduce where they were from the wave interactions from adjacent land masses.