Sometimes we just like a challenge, especially when we’re young and full of wanderlust. Wade Davis, in The Wayfinders, tells about a Pacific trade network of wh

Sometimes we just like a challenge, especially when we’re young and full of wanderlust. Wade Davis, in The Wayfinders, tells about a Pacific trade network of white beads going one way (clockwise, iirc; listened to the book) and red beads going the other, with acted-out hostility on the island, and approach-protocols by the voyagers, followed by trading strings of beads and some social-bonding time together before the voyagers departed. With each island having what it needed for survival (the ocean provided quite a lot before mechanized exploitation; see, for one, Eat Like a Fish, by Bren Smith), the trade across such distances may well have been to keep up the social network with people showing similar origins.