West. Recent developments in the field of DNA analysis have unequivocally settled the debate of Polynesian origin. They prove Polynesians share common ancestry with indigenous Taiwanese and East Asians. Wayfinding and navigation Training Navigator training was historically interwoven with culture and ritual. Great discretion had to be shown in candidate selection so that the knowledge preserved through oral tradition would have the greatest chance of survival. A master navigator's rank was equal or superior to a village chief's rank. Prudent navigation relies on no single technique but instead synthesizes position from multiple inputs. Underway, this constant synthesis makes it easy to spot the navigator by being the one with red eyes from sleep deprivation. For a traditionally trained navigator, these inputs include physical signals from the sea, skies, and stars, memory signals from his knowledge of star, swell, and wind compasses; and cultural knowledge recorded in chants, dances, and stories. Examples of physical signals include the color, temperature, and taste (salinity) of seawater; floating plant debris; sightings of land-based seabirds flying out to fish; cloud type, color, and movement; wind direction, speed, and temperature; the direction and nature of ocean swells and waves; the position of stars in the sky, and his estimation of the speed, current set, and leeway of his sailing craft. The "compass" he carried was not magnetic but a mental model of where islands are located and the star points that one could use to navigate between them. This mental model would have taken years of study to build; dances, chants (rong), and stories helped him to recall complex relationships of geography and location. The stars gave him highly reliable position information when visible, but navigators such as Mau manage to keep their position and tracks in mind even when blocked by clouds, using other references such as wind and swell as proxies. Mau's Carolinian star compass (pictured) is the basis for Nainoa's modern Hawaiian star compass. Apart from the bulk of training, which happens at sea, historically boys were taught in the men's house with pebbles, shells, or pieces of coral, representing stars, laid on the sand in a circular pattern. The bits of shell or coral that are chosen to represent which star or constellation is arbitrary, but generally, larger pieces are used for points of the compass while smaller pieces represent important stars between those points. In Mau's star compass, these points are