The canoe is an ancient Tahitian twin-hulled voyaging canoe. A deck connects the two hulls with a thatched house on it. The drawing is based on sketches made by the artists who accompanied the early European voyages of discovery in Polynesia. These wooden canoes, constructed by stone tools, were the vehicles by which the Polynesians explored and settled the Pacific islands.

In addition to fresh foods, they carried with them fermented and dried provisions, added to their food supply by fishing, and carried fowl, pigs, and dogs, some for food and some to populated the new land. Food plants, slips of paper mulberry for bark cloth, and slips of cordage plants were also brought to the new land. Navigation was by the stars, and wave patterns, cloud formations, and the flight of sea birds told them when land was near. Thus many of the sciences within the field of the Pacific Science Association were already practiced by the ancient Polynesians.

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