Early Sailors

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 3:30 am

Morning John.This method of construction was, and is, very good. It produces a good freeboard, a structure that is light and flexible and easiliy maintained. It is also a construction method that seems to have been developed elsewhere in the world as well.
The earliest method of boat construction for which there is any support is boats made of hide or skin, which is an obvious and logical upgrade from the coracle.
If you have ever had to skin an animal, and want the hide, you have a very yukky job on hand as the hide must be cleaned of the fat, flesh and blood vessels that remain.
The 'experts' tell me that is what the stone 'scrapers were for. Possibly, but there is a much easier way. I have been TOLD that Ants will do the job, but weighting it down in a lake or river will permit the denizens of the deep to do a pretty good job with no effort and FOC!
Getting a fur covered hide to sink, because of the air and or oil in it can be a problem so if you have a large hide to handle it would probably mean that two or three other people would have to hold the edges whilst you threw rocks into the middle.
After about two minutes of this any brain would realise that a wooden frame placed in the middle would produce a round boat. The coracle.
Pointing the ends is an inevitable next step.
To go from a coracle to a raft is like going from a jet liner to a horse and cart. Coracles and skin boats can be ported, rafts can't.
I suspect that anyone cleaning a large hide would soon be putting two an two together.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 9:51 am

Digit wrote:
I suspect that anyone cleaning a large hide would soon be putting two an two together.

If by 'soon' you mean a hundred thousand years, or longer, I would agree.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:08 am

I wouldn't consider that time scale as soon, no.
If one person didn't make the connection in his lifetime why would a few hundred generations make any difference?
Why, with all the evidence against it, do you insist that the non steerable raft was used for sea crossings?

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:08 am

I don't see that, R/S.

How would the accumulated knowledge be passed down? No, it strikes me as the kind of thing that would be noticed by one guy, maybe a bit brighter than some of the others, maybe not, in the course of a single lifetime.

That is for the breakthrough. The actual refining of the process could take much longer but the initial concept, that a skin would float and someone noticing that a skin would float would seem to be something which happened quickly.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:11 am

Yep Min. I do wish people would dust there cave man mentality out and try logic for a change.
There is no significant evidence that we are any brighter than our forebears.
And we aren't short of the odd idiot or two either!

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 10:15 am

And we aren't short of the odd idiot or two either!

Let's leave Bush out of this.

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 11:59 am

Digit wrote:
Why, with all the evidence against it, do you insist that the non steerable raft was used for sea crossings?

Pray what "evidence against it" . . . ?

Minimalist wrote:
No, it strikes me as the kind of thing that would be noticed by one guy, maybe a bit brighter than some of the others, maybe not, in the course of a single lifetime.

Of course. When it finally happened, it possibly happened in a flash (though with HE's 1,000 cc's of brains that may have been a very drawn out 'flash'...).
But imo that would be the culmination of tens of thousands of years (or even a lot longer) of trial and error (and drowning HE's!), before, one day, one individual had a eureka moment and licked the problem.

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:18 pm

Pray what "evidence against it" . . . ?

Sort of the total lack of evidence in support, to which you must add the fact that few sane people would take their family aboard a craft over which they had no control.
If we are to reason forward with no evidence in support then your arguments are valid of course, so we can use the same logic? to discuss the science of Atlantis.
Do you accept that a raft is non stearable?

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:35 pm

Digit wrote:
Do you accept that a raft is non stearable?

No.
A raft can be steered with paddles. Not very easy, of course. In fact very hard. But it can be steered to a degree.
However, currents and wind – IF and WHEN they occur – can of course easily thwart any 'steering' the rafters endeavour.

So you wait for 'dead tide' and/or a day without wind!

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:37 pm

When it finally happened, it possibly happened in a flash

Why does the flash have to come at the end? Why not at the beginning?

If they travelled at all they must have used something to carry water. If you note that an animal skin can keep water "in" what is the big deal with figuring out that it can also keep water "out?"

Rokcet Scientist · Post by **Rokcet Scientist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 12:45 pm

Minimalist wrote:
If you note that an animal skin can keep water "in" what is the big deal with figuring out that it can also keep water "out?"

The 'big deal' is that you draw that conclusion a thousand centuries later, with all humankind's accumulated knowledge to lead up to that conclusion. Plus the teensy weensy benefit of hindsight...

HE had none of that. And half your brains!

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:10 pm

Selecting a day with no wind and a slack tide presumes knowledge of the tides and a very short journey as the wind could rise PDQ.
Paddling a raft might well work on a lake, but in ocean swells? Not a cat in Hell's chance as it would slide back down every wave, and unless you can land at night or your paddlers are on shifts a current of more than one knot could put you back where you started.
Skin boats are known from at least 18000yrs ago, and seem to be fully developed, indicating a period of usage previous, so why are so reluctant to face the obvious?
The power of water, such as currents is enormous, the drag of a raft like wise and any paddlers would be rapidly soaked in salt water, a very uncomfortable and dangerous condition. So why?
Any knowledge of the sea would almost certainly come from fishing the waters and once again there isn't even any folk tales to support rafts.
I'm afraid RS that on this one you are a 'lone voice crying in the wilderness'.
I'm speaking from practical experience, you are theorising.

Post by **Minimalist** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:33 pm

The 'big deal' is that you draw that conclusion a thousand centuries later, with all humankind's accumulated knowledge to lead up to that conclusion.

Why? Why couldn't they make the conclusion the next day? What use would the accumulated knowledge of Mongolian nomads serve for someone living on the coast of Borneo? There would have been no mechanism to transmit such knowledge. Each group would have been on its own....evolving different strategies based on their own environment. That they did adapt speaks volumes about their survivability. Brain size isn't everything.....just look at Bush.

Barracuda · Post by **Barracuda** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:34 pm

Surfboards!

After all, this is California!

Only kind of kidding here.

As something of a primitive seafarer myself (sea kayaker, surfer), my bet is your basic driftwood log, with some slight modifications.

Shaping by flint tools would be hard, long work, but most dugouts are made mostly just using fire to hollow out and shape the boat.

Add some pine pitch to make it waterproof, and you got your basic long surfboard/dugout/kayak/canoe.

I personally know lots of guys who have paddled the 15-20 miles from mainland California to the Channel Islands on Sit on Top kayaks, that are kind of like plastic logs...

SOTs are about 14-16' long and not much more than 2' wide.

I also know guys who routinely cover 10-15 miles on paddleboards, which are just long surfboards. On flat days, I used to cruise the beaches with a longboard when I was a little grom. I used to fish from one, too.

Last summer a good friend of mine made a 50 miles open water crossing in the Sea of Japan.

I bet the islands were originally explored by surfers, who reported back to the other guys back on the beach that there was plenty of food on the islands, and they made some slightly larger boats, and went on safari.

The discoveries on Cyprus (Remember the original post?) are entirely different. while the Channel Islands are in sight of land, and can easily be crossed between sunup and sundown, Cyprus is over 40 miles from the mainland. That's an entirely different deal. Its an overnight trip for one thing, and how do you know where you are going, if you never been there before...

But I bet it was also discovered by surfers...

(Seriously, once you get used to the idea of being in the water, which these people where, lots of possibilities present themselves that might not occur to your average landlubber)

Digit · Post by **Digit** » Mon Jul 23, 2007 1:52 pm

Seriously, once you get used to the idea of being in the water, which these people where, lots of possibilities present themselves that might not occur to your average landlubber)

Absolutely, and not a load carrying raft amongst them.
As regards RS's 1000cc brain capacity, no not his, if you see what I mean, the objection to that figure being too low to reason such things as a skin boat is that no one knows how much brain capacity is need for reasoning.
The figures you quote for the time spent paddling Cuda I imagine are with using suitable clothing or other protection against salt water sores or 'Immersion foot, all of which become serious fairly quickly?
Alternatively you were not in the water that long?
Would you paddle a load carrying raft and how do you rate its stearabilty?
Are there any tales or other evidence of sizable rafts in you neck of the woods?