4 ms·

Yet, without such favorable conditions to develop sailing, would the lateen have been invented? (technology ladder theory) The more we learn about the Mediterr

by ip26 4y ago

Yet, without such favorable conditions to develop sailing, would the lateen have been invented? (technology ladder theory) The more we learn about the Mediterranean, the more I am struck that it was the perfect crucible, and that it is no accident it was the epicenter of so much in human history.

samatman 4y ago
Maybe, maybe not, but there are other ways to sail upwind, such as the proa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proa . When it comes to basic applications of fundamental machines (this is ultimately a use of leverage), humans have a way of figuring it out.
ncmncm 4y ago
People were sailing out of sight of land at least 40,000 years ago around southeast Asia, and possibly even up along the Aleutians and down the West coast of the Americas. What we are certain about is that they reached Australia. There was never any way to get there except via multiple such crossings. Whether this happened via Sulawesi and Papua New Guinea, or via Bali, Lombok, and Timor, or both, nobody knows. But at the time Papua New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania were all one island we call Sahul, and most of the sea between Indonesian islands was rich river bottom land, going on a million square miles of it we now call Sundaland, connecting with Taiwan and what is now all beneath the South China and Yellow seas all the way to Korea. People lived there for tens of thousands of years before the sea began to rise 20,000 years ago, continuing until 8000 ya, 200m in all, with 80m between just 12,000 and 8000 ya. The oldest cave paintings we know of are in what were then the mountains of Sulawesi, hauntingly similar to what shows up all over Europe from Czech to Spain tens of millennia later. When the water rose, people had to move uphill to where other people were already living. Australian oral histories still record resolutions of conflicts over that event.

by ip26 4y ago

samatman 4y ago

Maybe, maybe not, but there are other ways to sail upwind, such as the proa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proa . When it comes to basic applications of fundamental machines (this is ultimately a use of leverage), humans have a way of figuring it out.

ncmncm 4y ago

People were sailing out of sight of land at least 40,000 years ago around southeast Asia, and possibly even up along the Aleutians and down the West coast of the Americas. What we are certain about is that they reached Australia. There was never any way to get there except via multiple such crossings. Whether this happened via Sulawesi and Papua New Guinea, or via Bali, Lombok, and Timor, or both, nobody knows. But at the time Papua New Guinea, Australia, and Tasmania were all one island we call Sahul, and most of the sea between Indonesian islands was rich river bottom land, going on a million square miles of it we now call Sundaland, connecting with Taiwan and what is now all beneath the South China and Yellow seas all the way to Korea. People lived there for tens of thousands of years before the sea began to rise 20,000 years ago, continuing until 8000 ya, 200m in all, with 80m between just 12,000 and 8000 ya. The oldest cave paintings we know of are in what were then the mountains of Sulawesi, hauntingly similar to what shows up all over Europe from Czech to Spain tens of millennia later. When the water rose, people had to move uphill to where other people were already living. Australian oral histories still record resolutions of conflicts over that event.