The Wayfinders' Atlas

A runnable model of how Austronesian peoples crossed the Pacific — from the homeland off Taiwan out to the three corners of the Polynesian Triangle (Hawaiʻi, Rapa Nui, Aotearoa). The map and timeline below are built from the real record (radiocarbon, genetics, linguistics, oceanography). The simulation lays voyaging physics over that world and asks the headline question: what must the canoes and the strategy have been capable of to reproduce the spread we observe — and which assumptions fail?
offline · single file no build step falsifiable sources cited

Voyaging assumptions

Change these and re-run. Each is a knob on the canoe and the crew, not the geography.

Display

Click an island to inspect its routes →
3000 BC

Settlement timeline — simulation vs. the archaeological record

Grey bars = the date range the evidence allows (radiocarbon / tephra / dated faunal proxies). Markers = the date this run settled each region. The point is the fit, including the West Polynesian "long pause" and whether the run reaches the corners at all.
World model
Run trace
Inspect
Debates
Sources
Every successful colonising hop this run made, in order. Each line shows the limiting physics.
Click any island on the map to see why it was (or wasn't) settled, and the feasibility of every route into it under the current assumptions.