Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

[ronhl@juno.com (Ron Hopkins-Lutz)]

In article <341b467b.518910967@news.mindspring.com>, WWallace@freedom.org (William Wallace) wrote:
}On Fri, 12 Sep 1997 23:19:27 -0700, hgibbons@spamproof.stic.net (Hugh
}Gibbons) wrote:
}
}>In article <3419c63b.420544741@news.mindspring.com>, WWallace@freedom.org
}>(William Wallace) wrote:
}
}>>         Even in the most primitive "things that float" found have
}>> streamlining of some sort. About the only thing that doesn't is river
}>> barges that do not move under their own power. 
}
}>Irish used to use round "coracles", which must have been rather ungainly
}>in the water, but they could get from Britain to Ireland.
}
}        I am not familiar. Are you saying they are rectangular? 

Oh if you don't know about coracles, then you're missing a really fun 
subject!

Coracles are circular:  not even elliptical. Navigating them is as hard or 
easy as navigating an inner tube, depending on how good you are with inner 
tubes. I've always been amazed they can make it more than three feet at a time 
in a given direction in them.

They were in use in deep water for at least a few hundred years. Amazing 
tribute to human tradition that. Made of hide too. Some fellow tried to show 
that St. Brendan could have made to the Americas across the Atlantic in a 
coracle, per some Irish sources. Don't remember if he actually made it, but 
seems to me he did, or got so far to the West as to make no matter. Of course 
since they'd probably hit North America somewhere between New Jersey and 
Boston, one wonders why anyone would have bothered coming back to North 
America once they did? (That's a joke.)

=====
Ron Hopkins-Lutz = ronhl@juno.com
If anything I have said offends you, I'm glad because it means you actually read this, which is not a given. KILLFILES RULE!