"The Gilbert Islanders are Polynesians, having emigrated, according to their traditions, from Upolu, Samoa, which they look upon as te buto (Maori pito), the Navel of the World.
 

They never counted the nights of the Moon beyond the twentieth, so far as Grimble was able to ascertain, and in the vagueness of their lunar calendar bore no resemblance to their Micronesian neighbors of the Carolines.

The Gilbertese tiaborau or astronomers conceived of a system of imaginary lines drawn on the sky by means of which they could estimate altitudes of stars within a degree or two. They thought of the sky as the 'roof of voyaging,' the ridgepole of which was the meridian, a line running from the north point on the horizon through the zenith to the south point. The horizon was te tatanga, 'the roof-plate'.

One of the names for east, Makai-oa, was said to be the name of a far eastern land, not an island, which their navigators had visited in ancient times. Tradition called this great land 'the containing wall of the sea, beyond the eastern horizon, a continous land spreading over north, south, and middle, having a marvelous store of all sorts of food, high mountains and rivers'. It was also called Maia-wa (wa being 'space, distant').

This is a clear reference to ancient voyages to the American coast from which the Polynesians are thought to have introduced the sweet potato into the Pacific area. The similarity of Maia to Maya may be more than a coincidence." (Makemson)