How the ancients navigated

[BeTheGoddess]

One of my fav ol timey maps, the Foolscap of the World

The Fool's Cap Map of the World is an artistic presentation of a world map created by an unknown artist sometime between 1580 and 1590 CE.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool%27s_C..._the_World

I feel this was worth bringing up.

[quintessentone]

Polaris would give you your latitude. But Longitude always seemed to be the problem, in the admiralty tables, it gives you the time that the sun is at a certain position which is its ground position, hats a theoretical line drawn from the center of the sun to the center of the earth, and where it bisects the surface that is the ground position, which is always moving in a sort of spiral beginning the day at ten degrees and lets say ending the day at eleven degrees. The amount of one spiral line to the other is only on average sixty nautical miles, so if you were half a world away from Greenwich you could get pretty good at estimating its position at a certain point in relation to another given point. during that particular day. For practical purposes you would be pretty close, would you really need a chronometer? all you would need to know is the latitude line the sun was running that day, and what day it was during the year, then you could triangulate your position on the earth's surface, using the sunset or sunrise.
 In my example I used a theoretical line of longitude from Sydney  one known position on the map, up to the suns line of latitude on that day and stopped the line where I would estimate the sun to be in that sixty mile spiral for the day.Thats the other known position to make the triangulation. Hard to explain I hope you get the drift.

So watching the Joe Rogan/Jacques Vallee video and Vallee says before compass or other navigation instrumentation they used special remote viewers/seers, specifically the Tahitians. Perhaps everyone might want to watch that video to ascertain whether or not navigating by feeling the Earth's magnetic fields is credible.

[sahgwa]

One of my fav ol timey maps, the Foolscap of the World


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fool%27s_C..._the_World

I feel this was worth bringing up.

Had not seen that or heard of it. Thank you!

[sahgwa]

So watching the Joe Rogan/Jacques Vallee video and Vallee says before compass or other navigation instrumentation they used special remote viewers/seers, specifically the Tahitians. Perhaps everyone might want to watch that video to ascertain whether or not navigating by feeling the Earth's magnetic fields is credible.

Well then we also have to think about how magnetite and other magnetic materials were known to the ancients, and how far back. Very simple to make the old floating cork with metal compass, in case of cloudy days. But yes, the whole issue of triangulation.

[quintessentone]

Well then we also have to think about how magnetite and other magnetic materials were known to the ancients, and how far back. Very simple to make the old floating cork with metal compass, in case of cloudy days. But yes, the whole issue of triangulation.

Actually, my point was what Vallee was talking about on the video, that being that rare people with special abilities who could 'feel' or navigate by 'feeling' the magnetic fields of the Earth were always included as crew on ships of old.

[sahgwa]

Actually, my point was what Vallee was talking about on the video, that being that rare people with special abilities who could 'feel' or navigate by 'feeling' the magnetic fields of the Earth were always included as crew on ships of old.

I wouldnt be surprised if the people of old were able to magneto-navigate like birds.
I think we lost a lot of our abilities because we chose to focus on just our physical eyes and hands over more subtle senses.

[annonentity]

I wouldnt be surprised if the people of old were able to magneto-navigate like birds.
I think we lost a lot of our abilities because we chose to focus on just our physical eyes and hands over more subtle senses.

The human brain is an amazing thing it is a shame we don't know how to use it properly. If people can play chess in their heads, I am sure a talented person could just look around and say that's the way. I mean all the logarithms were worked out by a savant because the manual way was too slow.

[chr0naut]

At the price of looking like an idiot, I have been thinking about how the ancients could have navigated the Oceans if the suspicion was true that there indeed was indeed a worldwide civilization around the time of the last Ice age.
 I think the Great Pyramid was the major marker not quite at the 23.5 parallel but near enough it might even have had been the summer solstice marker when it was constructed for the purpose of this example.
 The technique is simple enough, and rests on the fact that the suns ground position changes by about a degree each day which is sixty nautical miles. The Sun at the solstices reaches 23.5 degrees north in the northern hemisphere and the same in the southern hemisphere at roughly the tropic of Capricorn. This method requires a static marker like the known position of the GP or in modern times a place on the map or chart. I will give a practical example.
 Say I am in the Western Pacific Ocean on the day of the summer solstice, I know that the suns ground position for that day tracks the 23.5 degrees south line of latitude. Thats as far south as the sun goes south. I look on the Chart and notice that if the suns ground position went down to Sydney. Then it would be... off the top of my head about fifteen days sun distances from Sydney to the 23.5 line of lattitude. I draw a line on the chart from Sydney up to the 23.5 lattitude line,and wait for the sunset that day,In modern times I go out on deck and as the last glimmer of the setting sun shines over the horizon I take a compass bearing of it, Knowing that Sydney is fifteen sun positins south of it , the compass will read approximately fifteen degrees less, so I note the two compass results, and draw the lines on my chart and triangulate my position on the ocean. In Ancient times a hinged stick would do the same thing. Not as precise as present day GPS but with a skillful operator a feasible way to draw a map or chart Islands, without an accurate chronometer.

The peoples of the Pacific Islands used a combination of measures for their navigation. They understood and recorded ocean and wind currents and could measure precisely the moments when the sun rose or dipped behind the horizon. They used the alignments with multiple stars of the Pleiades and transitions of the Sun and moon. They also used dead-reckoning of direction, and time of passage, from one landmark to another, island-hopping and recalculating when storms diverted them from their desired course.

In fact, the divergences caused by storms were passed on and became themes from which future storm divergences could be estimated.

It would be a mistake to try and relate Polynesian navigation methods to the grid references of European navigation on a sphere. While Europeans navigated according to Cartesian coordinates, Polynesians navigated more 'organically', using methods that were more fault tolerant because they had accumulated experience.

Polynesian navigation - Wikipedia

[annonentity]

The peoples of the Pacific Islands used a combination of measures for their navigation. They understood and recorded ocean and wind currents and could measure precisely the moments when the sun rose or dipped behind the horizon. They used the alignments with multiple stars of the Pleiades and transitions of the Sun and moon. They also used dead-reckoning of direction, and time of passage, from one landmark to another, island-hopping and recalculating when storms diverted them from their desired course.

In fact, the divergences caused by storms were passed on and became themes from which future storm divergences could be estimated.

It would be a mistake to try and relate Polynesian navigation methods to the grid references of European navigation on a sphere. While Europeans navigated according to Cartesian coordinates, Polynesians navigated more 'organically', using methods that were more fault tolerant because they had accumulated experience.

Polynesian navigation - Wikipedia

 I agree in the example that i gave, all the hard work has to be done, a Chart or map with a grid is an essential part , With that said once the chart or map has been made, The idea that you need sextants and reduction tables which are current, seem like overkill. Although the sunset and sunrise longitudes are different for each day they can be available on a small sheet of paper, and as long as you know what day it is, taking a compass reading of it and knowing that it is so many Nautical miles from a known point on the same longitude line for your position seems a lot simpler. Knowing that one degree on the earth's surface is sixty nautical miles means you can triangulate a position with a degree of certainty.

[Byrd]

Call me stupid, but no pyramid needed, didn't ancient seafarers just use the sun and the stars?

As has been mentioned, latitude fine, sunset etc.

Longitude, can't you use stars like Polaris, and constellations like Ursa Major/The Bear, since they will always be north? 

Also Venus is always a westerly direction throughout the year despite Northern or Southern Hemisphere?

You wouldn't even need an astrolabe. 

For fine tuning, you would memorise the location of certain E-W currents?

They did, and in fact the Polynesians had "maps" they made of the ocean and ocean currents.  They weren't exact as to miles/distances but features (waves and color changes) -- a technique known as Wayfinding (some good examples in the Wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynesian_navigation)

This page has an example of one of the stick charts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_I...tick_chart