Today it is outright easy to get across the world. In a time of motorised transports it is easy to not think about how hard it has been. Getting there at all can’t be taken for granted. This error is often committed by people imagining worldwide spread. Not to speak of the problem of what else people took with them. Too much was found in one part of the world but not in another. I will try to explain this later.
Flouting tree-trunks are not enough for getting on the sea by. Their movements are too unpredictable for this to work. Logboats are useful on calm rivers and lakes. However, they are not stable enough to be reliable at sea. There a raft is instead needed. Such can be made from bamboo or cut off tree-trunks. In both cases they are bound together with ropes made from plant fibres. Eventually rafts gave rise to the faster outrigger canoe. It consists of a logboat connected with a piece of tree-trunk with crossbars above the water’s surface. But I don’t think such boats existed tens of thousands of years ago.
With the invention of the needle another type of boat became possible. These consist of bark or hides stretched on an internal frame out of wood or bone. The one out of bark was the model for the present-day Canadian. The one out of hides gave rise the kayaks of the Eskimos. They have used open boats with the same construction in historical times. When I use the word skin boat it is such I mean.
Both rafts and skin boats is something one paddle oneself forward in. In a broader one can have two rows of people rowing. However, this is still not as efficient as one might think. People can get themselves along coasts and reach islands relatively near them. In contrast they don’t work for crossing oceans in an organised way. Single individuals have done this but it is not something people in general can manage. So I don’t think ancient peoples would have done anything such. Moreover one has to ask why they would have done it. They could not so easily have known there was land beyond the sea.
So how could people have known there was land beyond a sea horizon? Small islands right beyond the horizon can be found with the help of clouds. They collect above islands and are visible at long distance. If a larger island suffers from a wildfire its smoke is visible from far away too. Same of cause applies to mainland. In parts of the warm seas birds can be used as clues. Certain seabirds fish at day and sleep on land at night. They flying direction in morning and evening indicate were islands are.
Also, other types of birds can be used to find land. The Vikings captured ravens which they took with them in cages. When they did not know where they were because it was cloudy they could let one out. Ravens can fly all the way up to the height a mile. If the raven then saw land it flew in that direction. This to get away from the humans which had captured it. In this way many islands in the North Atlantic has been found.
Unfortunately, these methods long remained lost to Europeans. When Fernão de Magalhães’ fleet crossed the Pacific they found nothing before Guam. They may have passed loads of islands lying a little beyond the horizon. This without having any idea where the islands could be found. 250 years later almost no European could do that. James Cook sailed around the world twice in eleven years. (He was killed on Hawaii during his third attempt.) People believed he could smell land lying just beyond the horizon. However, I think he used the clouds as clues to where it was.
On the whole sails were needed to cross the oceans. How fast one can sail is determined by two factors. One is how little water the boat displaces. The other is how large combined surface area the sails of the boat have. The combination makes catamarans into the fastest sailboats. On the other hand they don’t have space for much in the way of cargo. To make way for more cargo the fluid resistance has to be increased. The design of sail boats is as such a compromise between cargo capacity and speed. Different peoples have made different choices depending on their own needs. Since their needs have been different their boats of cause were too.
Uploaded on the 26th of November 2024.
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