page_title: Austronesian peoples
section_title: Ships and sailing
hierarchical_section_title: Austronesian peoples / Culture / Ships and sailing
caption_attribution_description: English: Succession of forms in the development of the Austronesian boat per Mahdi, Waruno (1999) "The Dispersal of Austronesian boat forms in the Indian Ocean" in Blench, Roger; Spriggs, Matthew , ed. Archaeology and Language III: Artefacts languages, and texts, One World Archaeology, 34, Routledge, p.&#160;144-179 ISBN&#58; 0415100542.&#32;
context_page_description: The Austronesian peoples, or more accurately Austronesian-speaking peoples, are a large group of various peoples in Taiwan, Maritime Southeast Asia, Oceania and Madagascar, that speak the Austronesian languages. The nations and territories predominantly populated by Austronesian-speaking peoples are sometimes known collectively as Austronesia.
  Based on the current scientific consensus, they originate from a prehistoric seaborne migration from Taiwan, at around 3000 to 1500 BCE, known as the Austronesian expansion. Austronesians were the first people to invent maritime sailing technology which enabled their rapid dispersal into the islands of the Indo-Pacific. They assimilated the earlier Paleolithic Negrito, Orang Asli, and the Australo-Melanesian Papuan populations in the islands at varying levels of admixture. They also reached Rapa Nui, Japan, Madagascar, New Zealand and Hawaii at their furthest extent, possibly also reaching the Americas. A.G. Ioannidis et al. published in 2020 a genome analysis showing an Austronesian contact to South America around 1150–1200, the earliest one between Fatu Hiva from the Marquesas Islands, and Colombia.
context_section_description: Sea-going catamaran and outrigger ship technologies were the most important innovations of the Austronesian peoples. They were the first humans with vessels capable of crossing vast distances of water, which enabled them to colonize the Indo-Pacific in prehistoric times. Austronesian groups continue to be the primary users of the outrigger canoes today.
  Early researchers like Heine-Geldern (1932) and Hornell (1943) once believed that catamarans evolved from outrigger canoes, but modern authors specializing in Austronesian cultures like Doran (1981) and Mahdi (1988) now believe it to be the opposite.
  Two canoes bound together developed directly from minimal raft technologies of two logs tied together. Over time, the double-hulled canoe form developed into the asymmetric double canoe, where one hull is smaller than the other. Eventually the smaller hull became the prototype outrigger, giving way to the single outrigger canoe, then to the reversible single outrigger canoe. Finally, the single outrigger types developed into the double outrigger canoe (or trimarans).
  This would also explain why older Austronesian populations in Island Southeast Asia, Madagascar, and the Comoros tend to favor double outrigger canoes, as it keeps the boats stable when tacking. But they still have small regions where catamarans and single-outrigger canoes are still used. In contrast, more distant outlying descendant populations in Micronesia and Polynesia retained the double-hull and the single outrigger canoe types, but the technology for double outriggers never reached them (although it exists in western Melanesia). To deal with the problem of the instability of the boat when the outrigger faces leeward when tacking, they instead developed the shunting technique in sailing, in conjunction with reversible single-outriggers.
  The simplest form of all ancestral Austronesian boats had five parts. The bottom part consists of single piece of hollowed-out log. At the sides were two planks, and two horseshoe-shaped wood pieces formed the prow and stern. These were fitted tightly together edge-to-edge with dowels inserted into holes in between, and then lashed to each other with ropes (made from rattan or fiber) wrapped around protruding lugs on the planks. This characteristic and ancient Austronesian boat-building practice is known as the "lashed-lug" technique. They were commonly caulked with pastes made from various plants as well as tapa bark and fibers which would expand when wet, further tightening joints and making the hull watertight. They formed the shell of the boat, which was then reinforced by horizontal ribs. Shipwrecks of Austronesian ships can be identified from this construction, as well as the absence of metal nails. Austronesian ships traditionally had no central rudders but were instead steered using an oar on one side.
  The ancestral rig was the mastless triangular crab claw sail which had two booms that could be tilted to the wind. These were built in the double-canoe configuration or had a single outrigger on the windward side. In Island Southeast Asia, these developed into double outriggers on each side that provided greater stability. The triangular crab claw sails also later developed into square or rectangular tanja sails, which like crab claw sails, had distinctive booms spanning the upper and lower edges. Fixed masts also developed later in both Southeast Asia (usually as bipod or tripod masts) and Oceania. Austronesians traditionally made their sails from woven mats of the resilient and salt-resistant pandanus leaves. These sails allowed Austronesians to embark on long-distance voyaging. In some cases, however, they were one-way voyages. The failure of pandanus to establish populations in Rapa Nui and New Zealand is believed to have isolated their settlements from the rest of Polynesia.
  The ancient Champa of Vietnam also uniquely developed basket-hulled boats whose hulls were composed of woven and resin-caulked bamboo, either entirely or in conjunction with plank strakes. They range from small coracles (the o thúng) to large 
caption: Succession of forms in the development of the Austronesian boat[148]
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