srsen
Am I to understand....
If anything, I think navigational lozenges like the Clandon Barrow were actually derived from the alignments of the four islands in question, and not
the other way around; that is, these lozenges were designed specifically to encode information for thoroughly and reliably navigating the area in
question.
The existence of lozenge/double spiral motifs at many of the Pacific islands (particularly New Zealand)
and Europe (such as those found at
Newgrange), combined with the multitude of strikingly similar astronomical observatories and sight-line networks found in both locations, combined
with an increasingly substantiated potential for the settlement/exploration of these areas of the Pacific by ancient Scandinavians/Europeans, strongly
suggests to me that these sites are connected in ways we are yet to fully understand.
By maintaining this opinion (and it is just an opinion), I certainly don't intend nor desire to diminish the capabilities or intelligence of
Polynesians in general. The complexity of their migration from Mainland Asia is definitely not to be underestimated, and the island-hopping strategy
they likely employed was essentially the
perfect way for their civilization and culture to successfully complete such a thorough colonization
over such a large area.
Furthermore, the vast distances covered by the Polynesian language-forms is simply amazing, and future archaeological or genetic evidence could very
well establish an extremely ancient, highly active tradition of
global migration by these peoples.
However, the evidence as it
currently stands (and as I understand it in my admittedly limited capacity) does not encourage the existence of
this ancient, specifically Polynesian, "empire". At the very least, it simply encourages the existence of
some major "empire" or another.
I only lean toward a European origin for this vast network because they seem to have the most pieces of hard evidence in their favor, but that being
said, I always feel strange talking about this kind of thing because it seems like we're trying to complete a puzzle with a dreadfully insufficient
number of pieces.
Heck, we're probably using pieces from completely different puzzles altogether (which might be the key to all this, if you don't mind getting a
little too serious about Tower of Babel archetypes).