Has there been any historical/cultural anthropological research into how Polynesian cultures understood geometry before contact with Europeans? In part what I am interested in is how did the dealing with the problems of navigating on a scale where the spherical nature of the earth influence their understanding of space and shapes.
Just from browsing google I can see that a lot of Polynesian art seems to have an awareness of this but I know this could be because of my biasies when interpreting the art.
