Stone Age Career Lessons

By an astonishing act of will, I've managed to tear myself away from the MJ trial coverage long enough to read two wonderful books: Michael King's History of New Zealand (the last country on earth settled by humankind) and Michael Cook's Brief History of the Human Race. So bear with me for a moment ...

The greatest explorers in history were the Austronesians. These people emerged from the mainland of south-east Asia around 5,000 - 6,000 years ago. (By this time, Australia had already been settled for maybe 30,000 years by a different people.) 

Some Austronesians travelled as far west as Madagascar. Others - whom we know today as Polynesians - journeyed into the uninhabited expanses of the Pacific, travelling in outrigger canoes as far north as Hawaii and as far east as South America. (They didn't settle in New Zealand until a mere 800 years ago.)

As Michael King writes, "These voyages, ranging around more than half the globe at a time when Europeans had not yet ventured beyond the Mediterranean or the coast of their continent, were analogous in daring and accomplishment to the later exploration of space."

This diaspora across vast and mainly empty oceans could have been disastrous. How was disaster avoided?

Easy. The Polynesians explored before they migrated. When they set off to search for new lands, they travelled in quadrants that were upwind, or at least across the wind, to make sailing home easier. They island-hopped where possible. Their first voyages to any new island were two-way. Before making a decision to colonise it, they found out as much as they could about it.

Hmmm. Sounds like the Polynesians could have written a manual on 21st century career change:

• Don't just migrate to a new career: explore first.
• As much as possible, explore from the base that your current career provides.
• Focus on directions and stepping-stones; let the ultimate destinations take care of themselves. 
• Look for new careers that offer continuity with what you've done on the past - in other words, that allow you to take your experience with you and utilize it.

Of course, when you do your career exploring, you will have one source of life-sustaining nourishment that the Polynesians lacked. Somehow, they got by without regular updates on Brad and Jennifer (gasp).   

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