It would seem to but I will have to read up on the Bismarck Archipelago Indigenous Inhabitants (BAII) theory.
It doesn't immediatly make sense to me.
Support For The Theories Of Dr Steven Oppenheimer?
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I was at the bishop museum in hawaii in February. the dating for the polynesian discovery of the hawaiian islands goes to somewhere between 300 and 800 AD. seems to me this is long after the post ice age rise of the waters.
moreover in the 1980's some archaelogist found a malay/polenesain sailor who knew how to do cross ocean sailing on a small island off the coast of austrailia. so the old polynesian art of cross ocean sailing using the stars and the clouds was given new life around the hawaiian islands
that said, while it seems coastal sailing has been around since--who knows how long--perhaps the end of the last ice age...cross ocean sailing...is a relatively recent phenomenon. the difference in difficulty between coastal sailing and cross ocean sailing is say the difference in difficulty between sending a man around the earth and sending a man to mars.
that cook arrived in hawaii a mere +-1000 years after the polynesians got there does seem to suggest that there was a similiar origin in time/place for both the physical and intellectual tools to cross oceans.