Early Sailors

john · Post by **john** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:07 pm

Ummmmmm

How 'bout the sailors?

john

Post by **Minimalist** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:09 pm

Yes, you're right, John.

Back on topic.

john · Post by **john** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:35 pm

Channel islands off Southern California.

Pygmy mastodons.

Evidence of very early people - like 12k years ago.

They certainly didn't swim that distance.

Connection, anyone?

john

Post by **Minimalist** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 9:50 pm

I think the only issue there is whether or not they had to swim/sail at all. If sea level was low enough might the whole continental shelf have been exposed?

john · Post by **john** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:07 pm

http://www.pcas.org/Vol35N23/3523Porcasi.pdf

Check this out.......

john

Post by **Minimalist** » Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:24 pm

Okay...if they're right, someone needed a boat to get there.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 5:35 pm

Minimalist wrote:Okay...if they're right, someone needed a boat to get there.

Really?
The Anacapa Islands were/are less than 10 kilometers from the mainland coast. You could/can see the Anacapa Islands from shore! When people (think they) know (see) the destination the trip there doesn't feel as much as a really stupid gamble. So they find ways, by trial and error. Floatation devices, rafts, in this case. But I doubt whether those could be called 'boats' by any stretch of the imagination.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:34 pm

I'm not going to get technical. If it floats and can carry people, it's a boat.

Or at least, boatish.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:02 pm

Minimalist wrote:I'm not going to get technical. If it floats and can carry people, it's a boat.

Or at least, boatish.

I think it's very important for the timing here: 'boats' imply a level of insight and technological prowess that hominids developed maybe almost a million years after rafts started being used! I'm positing HE rafted.
Or, put another way: rafting to the Anacapa Islands could have happened almost a million years before 'boating' could have.

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:11 pm

This is a boat....

and so is this.....

and so is this....

and even this.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:28 pm

But this certainly ain't:

john · Post by **john** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:38 pm

Rokcet Scientist wrote:
Minimalist wrote:I'm not going to get technical. If it floats and can carry people, it's a boat.

Or at least, boatish.
I think it's very important for the timing here: 'boats' imply a level of insight and technological prowess that hominids developed maybe almost a million years after rafts started being used! I'm positing HE rafted.
Or, put another way: rafting to the Anacapa Islands could have happened almost a million years before 'boating' could have.

Okeydoke -

From the OED (shorter version)........

Boat: a small open vessel usually propelled by oars, though sometimes by a sail.

Raft: a collection of logs, planks, casks, fastened together in the water for transportation by floating 1497.

The essential difference here is that a boat is purpose-built so that it can be propelled in some manner, and likewise steered.

A raft is a passive platform which goes where the current goes.

Having lived on Catalina Island for a few years, a time ago, and having done my share of running small boats to the mainland and back, and around the islands, I can tell you that the currents between the Channel Islands and the mainland are very strong.

Someone who set off in a raft from the mainland would have only an accidental chance of making landfall offshore. I once got caught in a heavy fog in a small open boat, no compass, going from San Pedro to Toyon Cove, and it was only the sound of the breakers on the rocks at the South end of the island that alerted me that I was about to continue in the direction of Japan. The current had pulled me fifteen miles South.

Had I been on a raft, I wouldn't be writing this post.

So I'll go back to "boat", something purpose-built so that it can be propelled in some manner, and likewise steered.

As for "technological prowess", we are continuing to discover earlier and earlier examples of H. sap's ability to travel open water.

To me, it's kinda like the pre-Clovis argument.

Somewhere a categorical stance was created that early man could not possibly create or navigate a boat.

I have yet to read any constructive argument that puts a recent horizon on man's ability to build smallcraft.

john

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 7:55 pm

I agree with John.

john · Post by **john** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 8:35 pm

And BTW,

speaking of Clovis,

how come there is a huge concentration of Clovis points on

the Southern Atlantic Coast,

and then they get thinner and thinner as you go West.

This seems counterintuitive to the Beringian theorem.

Just what........if..............

you had a bunch of European folks

who had boats

and fetched up, say, in

the today's state of Georgia, and settled.

Then spread out from there, West.

"Simplify, simplify, simplify."

H.D. Thoreau

john

Post by **Minimalist** » Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:08 pm

That's certainly consistent with the Solutrean idea.....and who knows what kind of boats they had.