Waka Hourua — The Voyaging Canoe

They crossed the Pacific without instruments. The Māori ancestors read the ocean through the angle of stars, the direction of swells, the behavior of birds, the color of the water, the feel of the current against a hand trailed over the side of the canoe. They navigated to islands too small to see from more than thirty miles away across an ocean the size of a continent, and they did it consistently enough to build civilizations on every habitable island from Hawaii to Aotearoa. The waka hourua — the double-hulled voyaging canoe — is the most extraordinary vehicle in human history. It crossed more water than any ship until the age of exploration, guided only by knowledge held in human memory.

These signs carry the twin hulls of the waka, the star compass, the navigator's constellation, and the greatest ocean crossings ever made.