Mattang:
Stick charts were made and used by the Marshallese to navigate the Pacific Ocean by canoe off the coast of the Marshall Islands. The charts represented major ocean swell patterns and the ways the islands disrupted those patterns, typically determined by sensing disruptions in ocean swells by islands during sea navigation. Most stick charts were made from the midribs of coconut fronds that were tied together to form an open framework. Island locations were represented by shells tied to the framework, or by the lashed junction of two or more sticks. The threads represented prevailing ocean surface wave-crests and directions they took as they approached islands and met other similar wave-crests formed by the ebb and flow of breakers. Individual charts varied so much in form and interpretation that the individual navigator who made the chart was the only person who could fully interpret and use it. The use of stick charts ended after World War II when new electronic technologies made navigation more accessible and travel among islands by canoe lessened. [Wikipedia]
Noted in a review of an exhibition of maps from the British Library in NewScientist (10 December 2016):
Inevitably, the categories can overlap. Better, perhaps, to get lost amid the cartographic cornucopia than try to follow a fixed path like the earnest pipe-puffing ramblers on the covers of inter-war OS maps. The leaps between culture and context yield mind-stretching views, as when Harry Beck’s “electrical circuit diagram” of the 1931 London Underground shares a space with a mattang, a navigational stick chart from the Marshall Islands. This time-honoured seafarers’ aid not only locates islands with a schematic audacity to rival Beck, but even indicates ocean swell.
