Early Sailors

[Digit]

Thank you John, just saved me a lot of digit work!

[john]

I'll expand on the argument of techne, here............

Statement:

Any people, or group, or tribe capable of the techne of a purpose-built hunting weapon (cf Clovis points, with accompanying foreshaft and mainshaft, whether it be thrusting spear or atlatl), is also capable of the numerous other technes required for survival, be they boat, backpack, or basket.

As a matter of fact, I submit that the Clovis point would not exist unless the entire catalog of collective knowledge and technologies typical of a hunting/gathering culture did not also exist.

To deny this by use of the argument that because a particular example of specific physical evidence does not exist, the cultural context doesn't exist, is fallacious.


Let the fun begin!


john

[Minimalist]

Makes sense.

There seems to be an overall tendency to disparage the survival skills of early man. To be fair, those skills must surpass our own. How many of us would last a week in a predator filled environment without modern tools and weapons?

[Digit]

I was fortunate as a child to live in a remote village and was not therefore distracted by such new fangled things the cinema, television etc. Big Aaah!
But I was surrounded with numerous oportunities for getting into trouble! A small Trout stream wound its way through the heart of the village and I think I have tried most of the ways of near drowning, and of all of them, including an aircraft drop tank, I can say with quiet authority that the most useless item on wish to risk your life bar none is the raft.
It ships water in copious quantities, it must be poled or paddled from the rear, unless you have a crew to balance the two sides, it cannot be sailed in a given direction with any certainty and has to be about the most useless way of getting yourself and any goods soaked that was ever invented!
If anybody doubts my word I suggest they give it a try!

[Rokcet Scientist]

I was fortunate as a child to live in a remote village and was not therefore distracted by such new fangled things the cinema, television etc. Big Aaah!
But I was surrounded with numerous oportunities for getting into trouble! A small Trout stream wound its way through the heart of the village and I think I have tried most of the ways of near drowning, and of all of them, including an aircraft drop tank, I can say with quiet authority that the most useless item on wish to risk your life bar none is the raft.
It ships water in copious quantities, it must be poled or paddled from the rear, unless you have a crew to balance the two sides, it cannot be sailed in a given direction with any certainty and has to be about the most useless way of getting yourself and any goods soaked that was ever invented!
If anybody doubts my word I suggest they give it a try!

Sure. All that is true of course.

With the benefits of a thousand extra centuries of accumulated knowledge and hindsight. Neither of which 'the first ones' had.

For them, rafting was a quantum leap up from swimming – or paddling, rather – shark and barracuda infested waters!

[Digit]

OK, I'll move on to the small print.
You've built the raft because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
You've lashed your logs/Bamboo together and some how got the mess into the water, and ye Gods! it floats!
Every wave or ripple now sloshes up between the logs, if this is salt water you are soon going to be suffering from sores. Put it down to experience, your accumulated experience, and try again.
This time you build a raised deck, and low and behold, you're sitting in the dry. So off you go.
If you used seasoned timber it will become water logged and will soon be floating below the surface and there's a fair chance that scene one will be repeated. Back to the boat yard!
This time, accumulated knowledge, build with green timber, and it works.
Unfortunately you are now faced with the next problem that all raft builders face. Wave action causes your logs to 'work' and the bindings begin to chafe and fall apart.
Back to base one.
Repeat previous steps but add bracing across your logs to stop the chafing. This stops the logs from working, net result, you're sea sick because the damn thing now pitches and rolls all over the place.
But you're a sucker for punishment and put up with it, (a most unpleasant experience I can assure you).
Finally you got it all together and set off for the island you can see on the horizon.
A 50 MPH wind puts 50 pound pressure on every square foot of area that it strikes at right angles, so your raised area now ensures that you ride down wind with little chance of doing anything about it. The chances are that you will, A miss your destination, B not survive long enough to learn about a deep keel or sea anchor.
Show me one group of people who have stuck with rafts!
You'd stand a better chance of reaching your island hanging onto a log! That's assuming that your skin didn't slough off from prolonged immersion that is.

[Rokcet Scientist]

OK, I'll move on to the small print.
You've built the raft because it seemed like a good idea at the time.
You've lashed your logs/Bamboo together and some how got the mess into the water, and ye Gods! it floats!
Every wave or ripple now sloshes up between the logs, if this is salt water you are soon going to be suffering from sores. Put it down to experience, your accumulated experience, and try again.
This time you build a raised deck, and low and behold, you're sitting in the dry. So off you go.
If you used seasoned timber it will become water logged and will soon be floating below the surface and there's a fair chance that scene one will be repeated. Back to the boat yard!
This time, accumulated knowledge, build with green timber, and it works.
Unfortunately you are now faced with the next problem that all raft builders face. Wave action causes your logs to 'work' and the bindings begin to chafe and fall apart.
Back to base one.
Repeat previous steps but add bracing across your logs to stop the chafing. This stops the logs from working, net result, you're sea sick because the damn thing now pitches and rolls all over the place.
But you're a sucker for punishment and put up with it, (a most unpleasant experience I can assure you).
Finally you got it all together and set off for the island you can see on the horizon.
A 50 MPH wind puts 50 pound pressure on every square foot of area that it strikes at right angles, so your raised area now ensures that you ride down wind with little chance of doing anything about it. The chances are that you will, A miss your destination, B not survive long enough to learn about a deep keel or sea anchor.
Show me one group of people who have stuck with rafts!
You'd stand a better chance of reaching your island hanging onto a log! That's assuming that your skin didn't slough off from prolonged immersion that is.

Who said it was quick & easy? It wasn't! The whole process you just niftily described in 10 crafty sentences took them – in the real world, with no knowledge or hindsight – a hundred centuries or more to gain experience and find out the hard way what works and what doesn't!

[Digit]

I rather think that somewhere short of a hundred centuries they would have given it up as a bad job! I found out a damn site quicker than that!
I spoke from practical experience, I would also point out that there are images of what appear to be early boats but not of rafts.
If you, or anyone else on the forum, have evidence to refute what I have said, then let's see it.
I have good reason to suggest that a coracle would have been the first of the line, not rafts.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I rather think that somewhere short of a hundred centuries they would have given it up as a bad job! I found out a damn site quicker than that! I spoke from practical experience,

You rafted to the Anacapa Islands...?

I would also point out that there are images of what appear to be early boats but not of rafts.

Indeed. Those images have been dated a couple dozen millennia BP, and are among a multitude of wildly varying images. The artists and adolescents of those days (sorry, I mix 'm up all the time) had a wide grafitti range.
The era when rafting was 'developed' would be roughly a million years earlier than that! Afaik we know of no real petroglyphs that could be dated much older than 100,000 BP.
So, if there are no images, then obviously there aren't any of rafts either.
Nor of microwave ovens.

If you, or anyone else on the forum, have evidence to refute what I have said, then let's see it.

Evidence? That would be the holy grail, now wouldn't it?
Of course I have no evidence. Just as you don't. At this point we both have only logic and reason for our positions.

I have good reason to suggest that a coracle would have been the first of the line, not rafts.

Imo coracles would be a development of the raft. "The Raft Mark II". The halfway house towards the boat.

[Minimalist]

If I recall correctly, Bednarik has already dismissed the idea of "rafts" being used to move between the islands of Indonesia because of currents, winds and high seas.

[Digit]

You rafted to the Anacapa Islands...?

No, and do you have any evidence of anybody else doing so?

[Rokcet Scientist]

'Evidence', again, is an unfortunate choice of words here. No there is no evidence. Just a train of thought: if HE developed rafting it would explain how he could disperse across the old world to places – islands, that were inaccessible even in those days of hundreds of feet lower sealevels – where he couldn't walk to.
And if he did that, and he did!, then I must consider HE fully capable of having become the first American too. In fact I expect it of him. Across Beringia. Or island hopping along the Aleutians. Which, with the much lower sea levels, would have been much less of a challenge than today.
Also, if the Inuit and the Solutreans could live their entire lives on the ice pack, why not HE? Hunting the calory-rich prey that couldn't run away: penguins. Like the Solutreans, simply following their food would make them end up in America.

So that's why Charlie is so important. He might well provide the hard evidence!

[john]

......look up the Chumash Tomol,

a large seagoing canoe made of sewn and pitch/asphalt caulked planks

which the Chumash used on and around the Channel Islands.

Interestingly enough, no other North Armerican people seemed to have

used this method of construction.

Double interesting is that the Polynesians did,

AND the Polynesians must have started off from a mainland somewhere

Add to this fact that the Polynesians used circular fish hooks cut from a single piece of shell, and utilized the sweet potato

and you have an interesting triumvirate of fairly unique cultural indicators

which just somehow ended up in America.

Now, the relative timing of this phenomenon is somewhat late,

i.e., maybe within the last 5k years,

but to me it opens an interesting perspective

as to the sudden appearance of the Clovis in the Americas.


john

[Rokcet Scientist]

Quite!

[john]

More -

The split-planked canoe [called tomol by the Chumash, te'aat by the Gabrielino] was the finest technological achievement of the coastal dwelling Chumash and Gabrielino peoples, and was unique in the Americas. Nearly all of the Spanish diarists described these marvelous boats and were unanimous in their praise. In 1602 the Spanish explorer Sebastian Viscaíno visited the Chumash and wrote that

... a canoe came out to us with two Indian fishermen, who had a great quantity of fish, rowing so swiftly they seemed to fly. They came alongside without saying a word to us and went twice around us with such speed that it seemed impossible.

Almost two hundred years later, the Spanish explorer Font noted of these canoes:

They are very carefully made of several planks which they work with no other tools but their shells and flints. They join them at the seams by sewing them with very strong thread which they have and fit the joints with pitch.... Some of the launches are decorated with little shells and all are painted red with hematite. In shape they are like a little boat without ribs, ending in two points.... In the middle there is a somewhat elevated plank laid across from side to side to serve as a seat and to preserve the convexity of the frame. Each launch is composed of some twenty long and narrow pieces. I measured one and found it to be thirty-six palms long and somewhat more than three palms high [the palm measurement varied from 3 to 4 inches]. In each launch ... ordinarily not more than two Indians ride one in each end. They carry some poles about two varas [about six feet] which end in blades, these being the oars with which they row alternately ... now on one side and now on the other side of the launch.

The tomols varied in size from about 12 feet to over 24 feet long with a beam of three to four feet, and could carry about 4,000 pounds of cargo or up to twenty people. They were navigated by men kneeling on the bottom of the tomols using double bladed paddles.

Tomols were very light (two men could carry one) and seaworthy. Several times a year the coastal people made the round trip of over 100 miles to Catalina Island for steatite and to the even more distant San Nicolas Island, a round trip of over 130 miles.

The tomol was frameless, with no internal structural ribs and was made from driftwood logs, mainly redwood or from pine that grew in the Santa Barbara and Ventura back country and which washed up on the beaches during winter storms. It was collected from the beaches and brought to the villages to dry.

The wood for canoe making was very carefully selected: only wood with a straight grain and no knots was used, since knots would dry out and crack causing the boat to leak. The Indians split the logs into planks by using whale bone wedges or deer antler, carefully shaped, trimmed and leveled them with Pismo clamshell adzes and chert knives. After the planks were split those selected for hull boards were beveled and finished with sharkskin sandpaper.

Holes were bored in the hull planks using had drills tipped with chert or bone. The planks were then laid edge to edge and then skillfully fastened together with red milkweed [tok ] fiber cords passed through the small drill holes. Once fitted and lashed, caulking tule, which was the heart of dry tule rush, was forced into the cracks on the outside of the canoe hull. Then melted asphalt was poured along the edges where the planks came together and into the holes where the cords or thongs were tied.

Next a structural crossplank was added at midship to reinforce the tomol. Finally, splashboards were attached to the stern, prow, and gunwales. When all structural elements were completed the tomol was sanded and painted with red ochre which acted as a sealant that greatly enhanced the integrity of the boat. Finally, shell inlay was added for decoration to the outside in traditional geometric designs.

Possession of a tomol was a sign of high position in Chumash and Gabrielino society, and only male members of the upper class were allowed to own them. These boats were respected and cared for and were used for many generations and often were passed on from generation to generation. Font noted the status conferred by canoe ownership:

Among the men I saw a few with a little cape like a doublet reaching to the waist and made of bear skin, and by this mark of distinction I learned that these were the owners and masters of the launches.... When it [the canoe] arrived at the shore ten or twelve men approached the launch, took it on their shoulders still loaded with the fish and carried it to the house of the master or captain of the launch.

Among the Chumash, the men who made and used the tomol belong to the Brotherhood of the Tomol, one of the many Chumash craft guilds. Members of the Brotherhood of the Tomol called each other by kinship terms. The main activities of the Brotherhood were to build canoes, to fish, and to keep up the sea going trade with the Channel Islands.



California's south coastal native peoples also made and used two other types of watercraft for fishing and transportation on both the ocean and coastal lagoons:

Tule Boats (also known as Balsas), constructed of cut stalks of tule tied together into cigar-shaped bundles to form 10 to 15 foot canoes

Dugouts, made from the trunks of large trees and usually measuring between 15 and 30 feet long

Tule boats were used in lagoons as well as at sea and were quickly built: start to finish from the cutting of the tule to the launching of the boat could take as little as three days. To make a tule boat, green bulrush (Scirpus acutus ) was cut, spread out to dry for several days, then, when partially dried, it was taken up and formed in cigar-shaped bundles, the length of which depended on the size of the boat to be made. The bundle that formed the bottom of the canoe was much larger than the others. A willow pole ran the length of each bundle to add strength to the body of the canoe. Bundles were tied together at the stern and prow to form a raised point and then tied to the bottom bundle along their length. There was no seat in the tule boat. Instead, the boatman could kneel or stand in the boat and either paddle it with a double bladed paddle or with the arms when lying in the prone position. If the boat was not woven tightly enough, then the boatman would find himslef standing or kneeling in several inches of water. Sometimes the outside of the tule boat was coasted with tar to add buoyancy and prevent rot.

Very little is known about the dugout canoe that the Chumash used except that it was propelled with paddle or long willow pole, was used mainly for fishing in estuaries and calm water, was about twenty to thirty feet in length and made of a solid tree trunk, probably willow or cottonwood.



Painted with red ochre indeed! (my comment)


john