Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

[WWallace@freedom.org (William Wallace)]

On Sun, 14 Sep 1997 03:52:29 GMT, ronhl@juno.com (Ron Hopkins-Lutz)
wrote:

>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:  

	Circular beats rectangular any day. And certainly I agree to at
least one sort of exception. 

>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.

	Rather the more problem with a rectangular raft, as I was saying.


>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.)

	Having visited the region, I don't think that region is a
laughing matter either. 

	But again it asks the question, how would they get back? Rowing?
You can't effectively position oarsmen on a round object. 

=====
Any sufficiently convoluted argument can be made to appear to be science
as the layman equates incomprehensibility with science.