Mains'l Haul: A Journal of Pacific Maritime History

"The Deep History of Pacific Seafaring"- Jon Erlandson and "Evidence of Prehistoric Native American Seafaring"- Jim Cassidy

The Deep History of Pacific Seafaring-

Native Americans seafaring by using watercraft technology.

The Pacific is quite essential since numerous people migrated through it and so it has a lot of history. The oldest boats are less than 10,000 y. old. There seems to be evidence that Homo Erectus had built small rafts in order to go seafaring through the SouthEast Asia specifically; but didn't settle in Australia. 

There was an innumerable amount of water barriers that humans had no choice but to overcome and cross. I can't imagine how overwhelming it must have been for seafarers, since the fact that they had to build rafts and other materials from a limited amount of supplies, which were definitely not reliable and quite dangerous actually. Each time the people were going on journeys and seafaring, they were taking an enormous risk and were probably fearful. Another crucial thing that occurred were the strong currents which was only one of the barriers they had to find a way to overcome.

The “Kelp Highway”-helped with the maritime migration from Northeast Asia into the Americas; it played a huge role in immigration. Sites provide evidence for systematic seafaring, island colonization, marine hunting, fishing in the New World.

Coastal marine resources were exploited late in prehistory.  Hunting from water craft was less efficient than hunting land mammals.

Marine resources are very similar in nutritional value to those found on land. There also seems to be evidence of early seafaring with the Paleo-Coastal tradition; 100+ California coastal sites that date to Pleistocene/ early Holocene transition.

Cassidy’s research proves the developments of the maritime cultures to be true dating back 8,000 years.

I definitely agree with Cassidy when he states that the definition of “maritime migration” must have the same definition for people in order to analyze what went on; “migration” is defined as populations moving into new and previously uninhabited areas.

Native American Watercraft Technology-

Needed to be excellent for water challenges if the people came across any type of emergency/bad situation while travelling. This is still true till today because when people build airplanes, ships cars etc., they must verify that those are safe enough for people to ride in and overcome certain situations. Watercrafts had to be stable or else they would have been unbalanced in the water. It took a good amount of knowledge and expertise while building these watercrafts because one had to be quite careful. It was really amazing to come up with this invention and being very precise with every little thing they built within it and the reasoning behind it. The bottom of the boat was built carefully for the flexibility, the bow was to increase the speed of the boat; and they also found a way to cut through waves and minimize wind drift etc. People at the time and there continues to be people who solely rely on the seafaring techniques in order to migrate from one place to another. They definitely put all of their knowledge, technological skills and organized them in order to be able to build something this effective and valuable for hundreds of thousands of people through generations.