Navigation with the help of birds
At some point, seafarers first came up with the idea of taking birds on board, which move towards land as they fly up.
A soaring bird has a much wider horizon than the helmsman on a ship. If the radius of the field of vision is only four kilometers at an eye level of one meter above the water surface, it increases to 66 kilometers at a height of 300 meters. This only applies to land at sea level. In the case of surveys on the mainland, this value increases accordingly.
Bible and oriental sagas
Already in the ancient oriental report of the flood of the Atraḫasis epic (1800 BC) the successive sending of three birds is described, a dove and a swallow, which each return, and finally that of a raven, which does not return and thus signals the end of the flood.
In the biblical tale of the flood ( Genesis 8 : 6), Noah sends out a raven after forty days, " which kept flying to and fro until the waters dried up on the earth ". Then a dove three times at an interval of seven days, the first and second of which return, the latter with an olive branch as a sign of the receding tide. The eventual absence of the third dove is seen as a sign of the end of the flood.
In the Arabic-speaking world, this biblical story is told as follows: The sent raven came back sick, he had eaten too much of the corpses. Noah was angry about this and cursed the bird. As a punishment, his scream should sound as if he was vomiting all the time - until the end of the world. Disappointed in the ravens race, Noah sent a dove next. She carried out her task more conscientiously - pigeons do not feed on carrion.
Vikings and Irish
Vikings discovered Iceland around the year 870 . The explorer Flóki Vilgerðarson (also called Rabenflóki) used three ravens for navigation in order to find the island, which lies far in the Atlantic . After the Landnámabók he was an important Viking he went to look for Gardarshólm and put to sea where it is called Flókavardi ( Ryvarden ), on the border between Hordaland and Rogaland . He sailed to the Shetlands first . Flóki took three ravens with him at sea, and when he aufließ first, flew for Steven back, the second flew into the air and then back to the ship, but the third underlined by Steven in the direction from where they later found the land.
In the Celtic sagas the brother of the sea god Manannan mac Lir , Bran, plays an important role. Since Bran means raven and the connection to the sea is also given in the legends, the custom of using ravens as pioneering birds could be found here.
India
The "sea compass" of the ancient Indians was a pigeon . In the Digha-Nikaya , in the Kevatta Sutta , it says: Once upon a time, O monk, the seafaring merchants took a land-spying bird with them and then sailed out into the great sea. As soon as the ship had no more land to the right, they let the land-scouting bird fly off. But it flew east and south, it flew west and north, it flew upwards, it flew in all directions. When he finally saw land, he hurried there. If, on the other hand, he couldn't see land anywhere, he would fly back to his ship.
Polynesia
Notable examples of bird navigation applications are known from Polynesian seafarers. These sailors crossed the Pacific Ocean in twin canoes, relying on their ability to understand the signs of nature. The knowledge of the starry sky, the current, the wind direction, the smell of the air (of the nearby land), the cloud shapes and the migratory directions of the birds helped them to determine the course. So they could see from the flight of birds in which direction the next country could be. The Polynesians even managed to train the birds, similar to what we know from the pigeons. These trained birds are said to have shown them the way home.
Discovery of America
Birds also played a role in the discovery of America . Contrary to the experiences of the Vikings, Indians and Polynesians, Christopher Columbus did not have ravens on board, but used the chance sightings of birds. In his logbook, on October 8, 1492, it is recorded that many land birds were seen, and they caught one of those that fled to the southwest, there were boobies, ducks and a pelican. October 11: They saw petrels and a fresh green rush drifting near the ship.
Even at the time of the great European discoveries there were examples of bird navigation: Pedro Fernández de Quirós (1555–1614) gave his fellow seafarers the following advice: When you encounter flocks of seabirds, e. B. gannets and petrels , one should watch the direction in which they fly and where they come from in the morning. If they gather early and come back late, they'll fly a long way. If they do not collect at all, make a noise at night and cannot be seen at dusk, then either the land is very close or the birds have slept on the sea. It should be noted that these birds almost always seek out islets or rocky cliffs because they are then closer to the fishing grounds. For the seaman the conclusion is to be vigilant, because a shallow water depth, caused by sandbars or coral reefs, is also indicated. If the birds you are watching are ducks , wild goose , seagulls , terns or flamingos , for example , you don't need to be so vigilant because these animals can be found far from land. If the birds mentioned fly together, however, it can be concluded that the land is close. These empirical values were imparted at seafaring schools until 1921 .
Individual evidence
- ^ Karl Eugen Neumann: Buddhist anthology. Texts from the Pāli canon. Leiden 1892, p. 99