Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

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

I don't see a couple of points that keep being mentioned.

First there is no reason to believe rafts are automatcly rectangular. As a boy 
my friends and I often built simple rafts and many had bows. One even had twin 
bows. I see no reason why sea going rafts could not have had bows, especially 
it they were the inheritors of large raft traditions. We aren't taling Huck 
Finn, but peoples with deep water tradin experience involving a trading 
network. They also would now about streamlining from canoes, etc. What do the 
Spanish sources and any contemporary images of such rafts say/show?

Since many diffusionists talk about the importance of the currents, how 
important is the streamlining if they use different routes that take advantage 
of currents?

I don't think the issue of fresh water has every been addressed well. The 
reading I have done has always left me doubting that the supplies really could 
be adequate. Where are we on this? Water is the number one problem for ships 
of any time period, inclluding today, on long voayges.

I also have dowbts about the problems of water logging. Heyerdahl discusses 
this, considers it a real problem, but doesn't really resolve it. Sealants 
could resolve some of this. But there does not seem to a tradition of 
freeboard on these rafts as well to reduce water into the interior of the 
logs. On the coastal trade ne can assume that rpalcement of logs was fairly 
regular when they became water logged. But where are we with that on 
transpacific voyages?

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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!