Wilmé Lucienne, Waeber Patrick O, Ganzhorn Joerg U
University of Antananarivo, School of Agronomy, Water and Forest Department, BP 175, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar; Missouri Botanical Garden, Madagascar Research & Conservation Program, BP 3391, Antananarivo 101, Madagascar.
Forest Management and Development, Department of Environmental Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
C R Biol. 2016 Feb;339(2):78-82. doi: 10.1016/j.crvi.2015.12.001. Epub 2016 Feb 6.
Austronesians colonized the islands of Rapa Nui, Hawaii, the Marquesas and Madagascar. All of these islands have been found to harbor Austronesian artifacts and also, all of them are known nesting sites for marine turtles. Turtles are well known for their transoceanic migrations, sometimes totalling thousands of miles, between feeding and nesting grounds. All marine turtles require land for nesting. Ancient Austronesians are known to have had outstanding navigation skills, which they used to adjust course directions. But these skills will have been insufficient to locate tiny, remote islands in the vast Indo-Pacific oceans. We postulate that the Austronesians must have had an understanding of the marine turtles' migration patterns and used this knowledge to locate remote and unknown islands. The depth and speed at which marine turtles migrate makes following them by outrigger canoes feasible. Humans have long capitalized on knowledge of animal behavior.
南岛语族定居在了拉帕努伊岛、夏威夷、马克萨斯群岛和马达加斯加岛。现已发现，所有这些岛屿都有南岛语族的手工艺品，而且它们都是已知的海龟筑巢地。海龟以其在觅食地和筑巢地之间进行的跨洋迁徙而闻名，这种迁徙有时长达数千英里。所有海龟都需要陆地来筑巢。众所周知，古代南岛语族拥有卓越的航海技能，他们用这些技能来调整航向。但这些技能并不足以在广阔的印度-太平洋海域中找到那些微小且偏远的岛屿。我们推测，南岛语族必定了解海龟的迁徙模式，并利用这一知识来找到那些偏远且未知的岛屿。海龟迁徙的深度和速度使得乘坐舷外浮架独木舟追踪它们成为可能。长期以来，人类一直在利用动物行为方面的知识。
