Thinking about the Out of Africa phase of human migration always interests me. One thing that must be considered, relative to this experiment, is that our ancestors wouldn’t initially have know that there was any land to reach at the end of their voyage. What drove them to paddle into nothingness (if this was an accurate representation of how they traveled)? Fascinating stuff.
The Polynesian people had many ways of detecting land far beyond the horizon using ocean currents, temperatures, weather patterns, animal movements, and others which they used to island hop all the way through the Pacific Islands.
I have little doubt it was a well informed theory before they got into their vessels.
Didn’t Thor Heyerdahl do this on a raft like 50 years ago?
The kon tiki
From the article:
So we turned to the idea of experimental archaeology, in a similar vein to the Kon-Tiki expedition of 1947 by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl.”
Damn, I thought it was the 70s. I was off by decades.
You may be thinking of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra_(1972_film)
Yes but he did it the wrong way South America -> Polynesia.
Turns out it actually happened the other way around Asia -> Polynesia -> South America. Most likely, still a lot to be determined.
Maybe they had dog powered props?
Or a sail
Don’t be ridiculous. Now back to those dog-powered props,…
