Re: Amerindian navigators and Eurocentrism in scholarship

["Inger Johansson" <ingere.johansson@swipnet.se>]

Ron Hopkins-Lutz <ronhl@juno.com> skrev i inlägg
<5vhmdf$ddl$1@news.megsinet.net>...
> 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. 
><snip>

You got a point. If for example the "Swedish" people during The Stone Age
could used rafts to transport huge amount of flint from it´s "Normal
geografical places" in South Sweden = Skane and the "Baltic" Areas over sea
to Oestergoetland in the middle of Sweden, than why do some persons
discussing this objects in Re. to transports in other parts of the world? 

I doubt that persons on the American continent were less up to day with
solving their problems before Columbus than for example people in Asia.
That we do know, people in Asia many times solved transportproblems and
other technical problems long before us in Europe.


> 
> 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?

There are knowledge given from generation to generation, I had it from my
farther (82 Years old) that when travelling north You winn 2 knots if You
go close to the Coast(any Coast of an Ocean) when travelling south You
would gain the same 2 knots if you travell in "free water" where You
couldn´t see the land. This current gain is true except for trevelling in
the wellknown big currents, and belive me people in the past knew of those.


I have read sources from 54 AD until 9th Century in Re. to the Golfstreams
and the bend it takes close to northern Norway. 
If You want primary sources You might start with Paulus Diaconus 1:4-5. 

> 
> 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.

This to is a knowledge given from an older generation to a younger: 
If You are at sea and use a skin(now a days maybe plastic products) at the
top of Your boat and a kettle close under You may have condense (as You
could in the dessert) to help You when Your proviant of fresh water are all
finished. In older times people (Vikings and other) used to take cattle
with them to have at least some milk. 

It´s also possible for a shorter time to drink seawater if you use two
different lichens and cinders from a fire as a filter before drinking.
That´s not the major problem. The monotonous food and lack of C-vitamin is
a bigger one.


 
> 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.  <snip>

Also knowledge used in older times and even today. If You read Tacitus you
might find how the problems with freeboard were solved by people from the
Northern parts of Europe long before any one could think of Vikings and
Columbus.

Inger E Johansson BA History <ingere.johansson@swipnet.se>