| Abstract: |
Introduction: The outrigger canoes of the southwest Pacific are well-known symbols of the Polynesians and other Far Eastern seafaring peoples. These boats were used to explore and colonize islands from Madagascar to Easter Island—places on the opposite sides of the earth, several thousand miles east and west of Australia. This study attempts to trace the outrigger canoe's development through its evolutionary history from the viewpoint of strict practicality in food gathering and transportation and argues that the seagoing outrigger canoe is the offspring of the early fusion of a basic transportation device (the dugout canoe) and a food-gathering mechanism (the fish ramp). It is known that the island peoples of the South Pacific originally came from Southeast Asia in several waves and that, about the time of Christ, the first wave of colonists left Indonesia to settle the island of Madagascar (Murdock 1959:207)
a second wave followed about the tenth century (Toussant 1966: 53). This long and complicated process of migration is better explained elsewhere
this paper will concentrate on the outrigger canoe question. The origin of the watercraft that allowed the colonization of a sizable portion of the globe must originally have been quite humble
the inventions that allowed the outrigger canoe to function so well may have been intended for other purposes at first. These original functions can still be seen today in some parts of Southeast Asia. The story can be compared to gunpowder, originally used for Chinese fireworks, even though its more serious use for firearms has dwarfed its original function. In the same way, the modern use of outrigger canoes overshadows the fishtraps that may have given birth to them. The chief advantage of this outrigger/fish ramp theory is that it allows a smooth and logical transition from the earliest times and most primitive model up until the latest and most complex. As has been pointed out by several avid sailors, a fisherman could have made a canoe trap simply by throwing hist nets over the booms of his outrigger canoe. This theory assumes that this latter-day fisherman already had an outrigger canoe to begin with and begs the question of early outrigger canoe origins, which is addressed here.
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