A new study of Polynesian canoe designs suggests that New Zealand may have been settled by sea-faring Hawaiians.

The idea that ancient Hawaiians could have made the 4,400-mile journey south shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with recent travels by modern-day voyagers using traditional navigation methods, according to lead researcher Deborah Rogers of Stanford University's Biology Department.

"These guys were incredible navigators and naturalists. They could tell when they were approaching a group of islands 100 miles out, maybe even more," she said.

In fact, members of the Polynesian Voyaging Society took the double-hulled sailing canoe Hokule'a from Hawai'i to New Zealand during a two-year expedition in the 1980s.

Crew member Ben Finney, who pioneered the reconstruction and sailing of Polynesian voyaging canoes, said that because of the long distances involved, the trip was made with extraordinary planning and preparation.

"It's possible but not in one shot. We had to sail very carefully by different legs, and each leg had to be timed by season to get the appropriate winds," said Finney, an anthropology professor emeritus at the University of Hawai'i.

New Zealand, or Aotearoa, was the last Polynesian island group to be settled, and it's not clear who got there first.

Various theories, including a direct Hawai'i link based on similarities in language, mythology and oral history and genealogies , have been promoted and dismissed over the past century. Most experts now believe New Zealand was colonized from the Cook or Society Islands around 1000 A.D.

Rogers said her study had two purposes, the first being to see if cultural data can be used to reconstruct population histories, just as genetic data is used in a similar manner. She said the approach could be successful only if using cultures, such as the Pacific island groups, that are isolated enough to maintain core traditions despite a certain degree of cultural exchange with neighboring societies.

The second purpose of the study was to see if the cultural data — in this case, traditional canoe designs — could reveal a settlement sequence for Polynesia.

Researchers gathered data on functional and symbolic canoe design characteristics for 11 island groups from the authoritative "Canoes of Oceania" by A.C. Haddon and James Hornell, which was published in three volumes from 1936 to 1938.

A data matrix noting the presence or absence of nearly 140 design traits was created for each island group, Rogers said. The traits included whether vessels were adorned with geometric or human figure carvings, plants, feathers or shells; whether hull seams were caulked or joined together by sennit; and whether the booms (" 'iako" in Hawaiian) attached directly to the float ("ama").

The researchers also developed new techniques to assess how much distances between the islands affected the likelihood of cultural exchanges, she said.

A series of analyses done without regard for existing knowledge of Polynesian migration produced results that, for the most part, were consistent with current thinking on the subject, with a few surprises.

Fiji, at the western edge of Polynesia, is generally accepted as the jumping-off point for settlement of the islands to the east. (The first people of Fiji were from Melanesia.)

According to Rogers, the new research suggested colonization spread from Fiji to the nearest islands — Tonga and Sämoa — followed by the Marquesas, the Tuamotus and the Society Islands, which include Tahiti. The study also indicated that voyagers from both the Society Islands and the Tuamotus may have sailed to Hawai'i. (The migration to Hawai'i is believed to have occurred around 400 A.D.)

"It's well-accepted that Hawai'i was settled from the Societies but not so much from the Tuamotus," Rogers said.

She noted the low-lying Tuamotu atolls were populated by master mariners familiar with open-ocean voyaging, making it plausible they could have sailed north to Hawai'i. "They were really getting around and their canoe designs were prized by other groups," Rogers said.

The study also found "a really strong connection" between Hawai'i and New Zealand, "but, of course, it doesn't prove it happened that way," she said.

Finney, an anthropologist, was hesitant to comment on the findings, since the study is based on highly technical methods familiar to biologists.

"Many people have tried to use canoe traits to trace migration and so far it has been a resounding failure," he said. "I have no idea whether this is a better method. The main conclusion suggested, that of Hawai'i-to-Aotearoa settlement, seems odd in the light of other evidence Either it tells us something we have not noticed, or the method is inappropriate."

Rogers' research partners are Marcus Feldman and Paul Ehrlich. Their study, "Inferring population histories using cultural data," appears in the Nov. 7 journal of Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.