“The principles of wayfinding are simple; the practicalities are very complex.” 

- Nainoa Thompson (a modern day Polynesian wayfinder devoted to sustaining the verbal histories and the teaching of wayfinding from father to son)

 
Wayfinding is the ancient practice of navigating on the open ocean without sextant, compass, clock, radio, GPS, satellites, weather reports, maps, binoculars, or even sunglasses.  Wayfinding was utilized in ocean voyaging thousands of years before the invention of Chinese or European navigational concepts and instruments.  These ancient peoples successfully sailed thousands of miles across open ocean long before the concepts of north, south, east, and west had ever been uttered.  When sailing throughout the vast south Pacific, a position error of even 1 degree spelled certain, slow, ugly and painful death by dehydration or starvation.