The history of navigation is the history of seamanship, the art of directing vessels upon the open sea through the establishment of its position and course by means of traditional practice, geometry, astronomy, or special instruments. A few peoples have excelled as seafarers, prominent among them the Austronesians, their descendants the Malays, Micronesians, and Polynesians, the Harappans, the Phoenicians, the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the ancient Tamils, the Norse, the ancient Bengalis, the Chinese, the Venetians, the Genoese, the Hanseatic Germans, the Portuguese, the Spanish, the English, the French, the Dutch and the Danes.