### L111 Predictable, bi-directional winds facilitate trade > Traveling Indian Ocean waters depended on the predictable reversals of the monsoon winds over a wide area between Southeast Asia and Africa It was no accident that the first truly global maritime trade networks developed in the arms of the monsoon. ### L154 The ancients traded via boat > Southeast Asian mainlanders were paddling or sailing from island to island to New Guinea and Australia by at least 50,000 years ago; their descendants were living in the Bismarck Strait region of the southwestern Pacific by 30,000 years ago. People were crisscrossing open water to Aegean islands by at least 8000 B.C.E.; Chinese fleets visited the East African coast a good century before Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope; raft sailors from what is now Ecuador traded with Maya lords in Central America long before 1492. ### L211 Sailing requires patience > Tom had a compass, a pair of binoculars, and a long pole, painted with 1-foot (0.3-meter) marks to a depth of 12 feet (3.66 meters), with which he sounded the depth while sailing in very shallow water. He had infinite patience—to wait for wind, to remain at anchor when the tide was against him. Time was unimportant. Wind and tide ruled. ### L222 How Sounding Works > Tom took a chunk of heavy grease and packed it into a cavity in the bottom of the lead weight. I cast the line, called out the sounding, and then pulled in the line and looked at the residue from the bottom trapped in the grease. An expert like my skipper knew the seated deposits so well, he could tell roughly where he was. In this way, we felt our way inshore on a day when the visibility was less than a mile, using the five- and ten-fathom lines and the samples from the bottom as our guides. ### L300 predictable winds that change seasonally are called trade winds > Open water is, of course, hazardous, but it has some advantages. The first is sea room—plenty of space to maneuver, to reduce sail and lie to in storms. The ocean far from land is more predictable, in the sense that prevailing winds often blow from the same general directions for much of the time. The trade winds of the Atlantic and the Pacific are classic examples. Monsoon winds in the Indian Ocean blow relatively gently from the northeast for six months or so per year before reversing and filling in more boisterously from the southwest. Even people on land know of these predictable winds, and especially of the seasons of the year when they reverse, allowing easy sailing in the opposite direction. When ancient Polynesian navigators wanted to sail east in the face of prevailing northeasterly trades, they waited until the months between January and March, or for major El Niño years, when the wind turned to the west and the trades faltered. It was a matter of lingering patiently, then setting out at once when the wind changed. This is really useful for sailing as traders: I didn't remember that the winds changed directions, although I definitely taught this with the dhow traders on the Horn of Africa. ### L359 Obstacles Sailors Might Face > Quite apart from navigational hazards like fog and unmarked rocks, headwinds could delay a passage for weeks. Pirates could descend without warning. Seasickness was a universal complaint, so much so that the Catalan Customs of the Sea ruled that agreements made at sea were invalid, because some passengers would promise a thousand marks of silver to anyone who would put them ashore. ### L427 we don't know why sailors started exploring Polynesia > Accident or deliberate exploration: we will never know whether offshore voyages from Southeast Asia, the first long-term seafaring by humanity, began by chance or because someone decided to venture into deeper water. ### L490 obstacles for sailing: how to handle a squall > imagine a sudden squall with strong winds that swamp a canoe without warning. The crew bail frantically and paddle for a small rocky outcrop where they know there is temporary shelter and shallow water free of predatory sharks. They run their canoe onto a tiny sandy beach, jump out, and bail the dugout dry. As night falls, they turn the canoe on its side and use it as a shelter for the night. Next morning, the wind has dropped and they paddle for the mainland. ### L528 sighting land is easier from land than from the sea > Knowledge of islands visible at a distance starts on land, where conditions would often have been good enough to make the presence of neighboring islands a matter of familiarity. Circumstances are different at sea. Under ideal conditions, someone in a canoe can see as far as the curvature of the earth will permit, allowing for light refraction by the atmosphere. But cloud, haze, spume, and other phenomena can obscure the horizon even on days when visibility is excellent, making the sighting of land from the ocean much harder. ### L541 > a voyaging corridor, which enjoyed favorable weather conditions and, most important, predictable and relatively gentle wind shifts that allowed people to sail out to islands visible on the horizon, and also to return as the seasons changed without having to battle headwinds. ### L556-64 pros and cons of rafts ^b2d5bc > Poles must soon have become flat-bladed paddles, which, when used by several people, would move the raft along slowly in calm conditions. Again, less a matter of invention than of necessity, for anyone who has stirred a boiling container over a fire knows that a wooden paddle does the job best. Paddles worked well in calm or moderate weather, but rough water was another matter, for flat, clumsy rafts, even when constructed of buoyant wood, were practicably immovable when paddled against even moderate headwinds. > Rafts were the usual means of crossing open water—and they had the advantage of being able to carry enough people to form founder populations > Reeds make for light boats, easily carried ashore, but they become waterlogged and useless within two or three days. For ### L572 dugout canoes are terrifying Dugouts have crossed rivers and lakes since very early times and need little improvement to do so. I must confess that they terrify me, and with good reason. On numerous occasions, I crossed crocodile-infested rivers in Africa in wildly gyrating, heavily laden dugouts with the water but a couple of inches below the edge. Fortunately, only once did we go in, and that was in the shallows, when someone accidentally stepped on the edge of the canoe. Dugouts are easily hollowed out from straight tree trunks, but, inevitably, they are long and narrow. This makes even a well-built example potentially unstable, even in calm water and expert hands. ### L578 dugout canoes lacked space and stability in open water Dugouts in their most basic form paled in comparison with the raft, even if they moved faster when paddled in calm water. They would have lacked not only load-carrying capacity but also the strength and stability to survive in open water, except in the most expert hands. LOCATION: 578 ### L581 increasing stability led to possibility of sails The most pressing problem was that of stability, or “tippiness,” as a sailor friend of mine once called it. The solution came with double hulls or single outriggers, either of which widened the beam of the canoe and made it much more stable—in short, a kind of platform. Both configurations also allowed for the use of masts and sails, for in these waters, with their predictable winds, sailing must have begun very soon after seafaring. ### L607 jobs on an ancient sailboat > A young man stands at the bow of each canoe, watching for telltale color changes in the water, for the lighter blue and dark patches of coral and sandbanks lurking ahead. Almost simultaneously, the lookouts gesture to the right. The helmsmen heave on their steering paddles and alter course immediately. Meanwhile, the elder looks for potential landing spots. He identifies a sheltered sandy beach, then casts around for smoke, houses, or other signs of human occupation. - [i] [[Finding Winged Island Story]] ### L628 fishing at sea > But there would have been fish that could be taken in deep water, especially those attracted to the shadows cast by a raft on the surface. I learned this when crossing the Atlantic and began making a beeline for any driftwood or floating weed, for fish almost invariably lurked in the shadows close under water. ### L642 ancient people moved a lot > the natural dynamics of fishing and coastal living were never static. People were always on the move; families splintered, relatives quarreled; disputes over fishing territories or food shortages threatened survival. And, just as on land, the option of moving away was always there. In these instances, voyagers simply sailed away to distant islands visible from the shore. This meshes with [[The Civilizations of Africa by Christopher Ehret]] and [[The Horse The Wheel And Language by David Anthony]]. #pkm/synthesize ### L671 > These explorers were without agriculture, but had hunted out so much island quarry that they deliberately imported game. The islanders brought the arboreal marsupial the gray cuscus (Phalanger orientalis) by canoe from New Guinea to islands where they were unknown. Cuscuses had arrived on New Ireland by 15,000 years ago, bandicoots on the Admiralty Islands by 12,000 years before present, and wallabies on New Ireland by 7,500 years ago. These seemingly haphazard attempts to increase food supplies on relatively impoverished islands are unique in human history: for the first time anywhere, people shifted food resources instead of moving to them. > > Sometime later, farming began on the islands. New Guinea and the Bismarcks were the places of origin for many tropical crops, among them such later staples as taro, sugarcane, and some forms of banana. Fruit trees were also important on the islands, with trees being cropped to improve orchard yields. Domesticated plants allowed canoe skippers to store food such as taro and yams for long voyages. ### L755 more stable technology for ships than canoe > a canoe sailing in waves is far more stable if it becomes a platform rather than a single hull. Two ready solutions must have come into play soon after people plied the waters off Sunda: outriggers and double hulls. Of the two, the double-hulled canoe is the most practical craft for offshore sailing, on account of both its load capacity and its sailing qualities. Unfortunately, the last double-hulled canoes disappeared at least a century ago, leaving us with nothing but drawings by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century artists, notably of elaborate Tahitian war canoes, so we know little about these craft. We know from modern experiments that double-hulled canoes were capable of sailing at a reasonably close angle to the wind, perhaps as close as sixty degrees. This would have made passages against prevailing trade winds entirely practicable, if relatively slow. Thus, one always had the guarantee of being able to return by turning in front of the wind. #pkm/synthesize crossref [[50 Information/52 Annotated/Beyond the Blue Horizon by Brian Fagan#L581 increasing stability led to possibility of sails]] ### L813 canoes needed crews to be safe Razor-sharp coral reefs lurked close to the surface, revealed only by rapidly changing colors in the water, which is why many canoes always had a crewman in the bow when sailing in shallow water. ### L838 mythmaking as a navigational tool > All these myths colored the seascape and gave it meaning. It became something alive and familiar. Individual rocks acquired distinctive personalities. Legendary tales brought alive the shorelines fast approaching on the horizon. Mythic names, vivid stories, passed from the old to the young. A legendary hero cast a rock after an escaping canoe; it became a landmark. Two rocks represented a couple turned into stone. The seascape formed a continual story that linked past and present, the hazards and features of ocean waters near and far. This reminds me of my uncle making up bullshit stories to pass the time; that grow in the telling but provide useful frame of reference, because the human brain remembers stories better than it remembers particular shapes and random unconnected facts. This sort of oral storytelling about the landscape system or to have my uncle would call the lighthouse a rocket. ### L864 founders of colonies attain high status > Founders—the original colonists and discoverers—may have assumed great prestige and importance in Lapita society, thereby providing a powerful incentive for bold voyaging into the unknown. NOTE: this point so good motivation for a colonization story, and can be used to follow up on the article about colonization versus imperialism. ### L882 relationships between distant peoples predate the internet > If historical Near Oceanian societies are any guide, factionalism, ever-shifting alliances, and sudden raids were part of island life, as were cherished relationships between individuals living at considerable distance from one another, who might meet face-to-face only once or twice in their lifetimes. Such contacts, often endowed with profound spiritual meaning and frequently reinforced by the exchange of valued objects, formed the umbrella for much wider trading. This reminds me of the relationships between the Kings of ancient Syria, how they viewed themselves as Brotherhood even though they never really met, because of the exchange of prestige goods that helped them maintain their power in their own society. I can imagine that the islands here would have worked in a similar way. See also: [[Brotherhood of Kings by Amanda Podany]]. #pkm/synthesize ### L917 kula is a type of ritualized network that binds people > The Kula is an interwoven fabric of relationships that encompasses men living hundreds of miles from one another, bound together by direct and indirect ties. Over the generations, a vast intertribal network of ideas, cultural influences, art motifs, songs, and alliances travels down the Kula routes. Thousands of men scattered over hundreds of square miles enjoy Kula relationships. NOTE: This seems pretty similar to gatherings of nomadic herders in the Eurasian Plains. #pkm/synthesize [[marriage]] ### L930 strategic marriages helped bind seafaring island people Long distance voyaging along familiar routes lay at the core of this “empire,” combined with strategic marriages that cemented ties over hundreds of miles. Prestigious goods such as mats, feathers, sandalwood, bark cloth, canoes, and pottery flowed into Tongatapu, the pinnacle of what became a highly stratified, quite stable society. Tongan royal power depended on a seamless knowledge of surrounding waters that blurred the distinctions between land and sea. #pkm/synthesize [[marriage]] ### L1065 how to use the stars as a compass > Carolinian pilots knew which zenith stars pass directly over different islands, so when exploring unknown waters they would sail upwind, always knowing that they could reverse course and use zenith stars to return home. They also used a form of star compass, based on the North Star, five positions of the Southern Cross, and thirteen constellations. Might be relevant for my note on [[2020.12.14 Navigation|navigation]]. ### L1079 mental models for sailing > This is etak, a system of expressing distance used by pilots who well know that the notion of a stationary canoe is a fiction. They work with mental images, with a bearing of a reference island to the side of their course. Thus, the imagery of the star bearing set on the horizon that shows the position of a moving island is entirely logical as a navigational device. In this way the navigator minimizes the number of moving systems around him. He mentally allows the canoe and stars to remain stationary while the islands move around in a perception of the ocean that enables him to know he has reached his destination when the reference island has the same bearing from the canoe as it does from his destination island. Etak is a timeless exercise, for the duration of longer passages across open ocean is not an important consideration for navigators whose primary concern is to reach their “target,” not how long it takes to get there. Reminds me of Amazon trail game. Also I really like how this isn't presented as a "primitive foolishness" thing but rather just as a useful mental model. ### L1109 Long-distance voyaging was a privileged activity. Most Polynesians stayed at home, fishing in lagoons and cultivating their gardens. Cultivable acreage was the basis of social life, even on the larger islands. The social structure associated with agriculture revolved around inheritance and access to the land. Birth order was all-important. So the driving force behind colonization of Remote Oceania may have been a quest for land and the privileges of inheritance. Prestige and power also came from maritime expertise, from knowledge of a deciphered ocean. To those who traveled across them, Polynesian waters became not a barrier but a network of watery highways that connected one’s island to many others. ### L1131 canoes can stay at sea for 20 days According to Tupaia, the longest a canoe could stay at sea without reprovisioning was about twenty days. ### L1172 too much taxation leads to starvation Inevitably, political and ritual power passed to those who owned the best land. By 1600 C.E., some Polynesian societies had developed into elaborate chiefdoms headed by small elites of chiefs, navigators, and priests, especially in areas where wet, swamp-based agriculture was possible. Inevitably, the escalating demands of chiefs and priests questing for ever more prestige threatened the fine line between subsistence and surplus. ### L1211 chickens are proof of Polynesian/American trade > The mitochondrial DNA from chicken bones found on Tonga and Samoa is identical to that from chicken fragments found at a coastal settlement named El Arenal-1, in south-central Chile, dating to 1321 1407 C.E., nearly a century before Columbus landed in the Bahamas and before the time of the great voyages.17 Perhaps, then, Polynesian canoes reached South America soon after the colonization of Remote Oceania, bringing chickens with them. Perhaps they picked up plants like sweet potatoes and bottle gourds and brought them back to Polynesia. ### L1237 when were ancient traders sailing > We briefly trace the fortunes of the Phoenicians as the pace of Mediterranean sea history quickens after 500 B.C.E., for these remarkable mariners and traders were the first from the south to explore Northern European waters in search of tin. But, many centuries earlier, Egyptian ships were plying the Red Sea and trading as far south as the mysterious Land of Punt, on the margins of the vast monsoon world of the Indian Ocean. ### L1260 Aegean is very different from the rest of the Mediterranean > The Aegean is an island-crowded sea, compact and challenging to traverse because of the strong winds and short, steep waves. In a sense, it’s an inland ocean within the much larger Mediterranean world. ### L1300 > At this stage in the research, we can be reasonably confident that there were two basic forms of early watercraft in the Aegean cradle. Both were canoelike vessels, depicted in rock engravings or on clay pottery. The smallest, and presumably the earliest, was a dugout-like craft, apparently paddled by a small number of people. Then there were larger boats—s lender, longboat-like designs with angled hulls for speed and a post-like stern capped with a carving of a fish. ### L1306 human power mattered more than sail on the Aegean sea due to unpredictable winds > Unpredictable Aegean waters, with their prolonged calms, were, above all, a paddler’s and oarsman’s world, and it was human power that propelled warships and large merchant vessels for much of the time in later millennia. ### L1329 canoes aren't faster than portage > the distance covered by a canoe in a day was about the same as that recorded for portage on land. ### L1352 trade around the ancient Cyclades > For all their drawbacks as farmland, the Cyclades had other assets. They possessed one priceless commodity for Stone Age hunters: obsidian, the finest of all toolmaking stones, a rarity on the mainland. Thanks to high-technology sourcing of trace elements in artifacts and natural outcrops, we know that obsidian in mainland settlements came from two locations on Milos, which also provided another valuable commodity for people living off wild plant foods or cereal crops: volcanic rocks for grinding stones. (In later times, other valuable commodities came from the Cyclades. Marble passed to the mainland from Naxos and Paros. Copper, lead, and silver came from several islands, as did small amounts of gold.) Almost certainly, the first exploration of the Cyclades was purely exploitative and revolved around toolmaking stone. ### L1382 networks of local knowledge > We should remember that these tenuous networks of people, of shared intelligence about obsidian resources, fishing, and so on, were constantly on the move as part of a way of life that encompassed mainland, island, and ocean. Such knowledge enabled people to travel from one island to the next over considerable distances long before farming took hold in about 6000 B.C.E. NOTE: Reminds me of my experience with wurm unlimited server starts ### L1403 agriculture in Aegean region was very uncertain > Living permanently on the Cyclades was never easy, for survival depended on diversifying one’s crops among carefully selected microenvironments. Barley, wheat, and pulses were staples, while goats and sheep thrived on rugged island slopes. Olives and vines became important crops later, when they were widely traded commodities, but almost certainly not in earlier millennia. The uncertainty of the Aegean agricultural year meant that storage of foods of all kinds, including animals on the hoof, was of great importance, a process that must have involved sharing among neighboring communities and perhaps even between one island and another. Unlike mainland farmers, islanders could not fall back on a cushion of reliable wild plant foods or game like fallow deer. The realities of daily life meant that most island communities were small and widely dispersed over generally rugged island terrain. Populations were tiny, to the point that people in the Cyclades were a scarce resource. Few islands attained self-sufficient populations and marriage networks of about three hundred to five hundred people. There were many more people living in a single early Mesopotamian city such as Uruk, one of the earliest urban settlements in the world in the fourth millennium B.C.E., than in the entire Cyclades. Inevitably, then, there was a high degree of interdependence among the islands, for exchange of food and other commodities and mobility were the only long-term survival strategies. ### L1455 farming lifestyles in the Aegean Sea > As far as we can tell from the very limited data, the earliest farming villages often lay on bluffs overlooking major bays with good water supplies close at hand. This may have maximized opportunities for fishing, an important supplemental food source for people short of good arable land. The pattern changed dramatically after 3500 B.C.E., when islanders began to settle in small one- or two-family farmsteads close to patches of arable land and colonized smaller, rugged islands such as Erimonisi. ### L1493 Aegean living required seeing the sea as part of the landscape > Deciphering the Aegean was an easy task in terms of establishing basic geography and overcoming the fear of crossing open water. What required prolonged experience and intense decipherment was the acquisition of a mental chart of the ocean around one, of different islands and their anchorages and beaches, of places where you could haul ashore while the meltemi churned the ocean into a froth of whitecaps. As it was everywhere, early seafarers learned to think of the Aegean and off-lying islands on the horizon as part of their landscape of daily existence. It was only a matter of time before they incorporated the seascape into their daily lives. Once they did, they could live on the islands at their doorstep only by interacting constantly with other local communities across the sea. ### L1532 what ancient ports looked like > Piles of sweet-smelling cedar logs lie on the stone quays of the small harbor. Flat- bottomed cargo ships from the Nile lie alongside, their decks almost level with the tops of the stones. Sweating crew members and timber laborers roll trunk after trunk to quayside, then lever them carefully down ramps into the hold with fiber-and-hide ropes. The skipper directs the loading from above, carefully placing each log so that the weight is evenly distributed. A high-ranking Egyptian official in a clean white kilt watches the loading from a distance as his scribe carefully records the length of each log. The skipper calls out. His ship is fully loaded. His crew dismantle the ramps and stow them, then pole the laden vessel out of the harbor; a few oarsmen create steerageway as the skipper anchors close offshore to wait for others in the convoy. Meanwhile, another empty vessel comes alongside the quay and loading resumes. NOTE: Useful description of an ancient port. ### l1558 Egyptian sea navigators relied on coastal sailors and land surveying tools <blockquote class="paraphrase"> The Egyptian river pilots who first sailed into the ocean were excellent seamen—they had to be, for they navigated among shallows and in muddy waters, where sounding poles and lead-and-line were in daily use. Deciphering more open water would have involved simple, well-honed skills. Everyone would have shipped out with a sounding rod or a knotted and weighted cord similar to those used by land surveyors, carefully unrolled from a neat coil, as depicted on a wall painting of the second millennium B.C.E. Thus, the pilots would gauge their distance from the land and their location from soundings, knowing from experience where shallows extended some distance offshore. They were expert at taking and interpreting depths, familiar with the vagaries of local currents, and well aware of the **feel of winds as they blew from different quarters.** </blockquote> ### l1558 how Egyptian ships changed because of cultural diffusion <blockquote class="paraphrase"> As the mariners gained experience and met seamen from other cultures, they modified their ships. By the second millennium, Egyptian merchant vessels in the Red Sea had high bows and sterns, twin steering oars, and ten to twenty oarsmen on each side. A square sail set on a yard supported by stays and shrouds allowed the ship to make use of favorable winds. The Egyptians traded with Crete. </blockquote> #pkm/synthesize [[Egypt]] ### L1683 risks and profits were enormous for sailors > The value of the coastal trade was enormous, but always dispersed, in the hands of individual ship owners and small-time merchants backed by interests ashore. Risks were enormous, for there was no insurance. But the profits could be immense, which is why so many ships went to sea. This doesn't make sense; it's not like the ships were treating things when their own right, they were usually doing the expensive stuff on behalf of leaders because it was used for dowry's etc. ### L1753 early warship developments included rams and platforms By 500 B.C.E., the open pirate vessels of earlier times had given way to carefully designed warships. A Greek city, Corinth, a major maritime power, led the way with specialized warships with rams that projected from their prows. Fighting platforms came into use from which soldiers fought, the oarsmen protected by the deck as they rowed from low in the ship. Warships became faster, lower, and sleeker. They now boasted two banks of oars, which eventually developed into the celebrated trireme, the warship par excellence of the classical world. ### L1802 The eunuch Zheng He’s seven voyages around the Indian Ocean between 1403 and 1433 provided strange exotics for the imperial court and at least nominal tribute in one of the first global diplomatic initiatives, made possible by much older decodings of the cycles of the monsoon winds. ### L1821 the science behind monsoon winds The secrets of the monsoon were common knowledge around the northern Indian Ocean, sometimes called the Arabian Sea, long before recorded civilization. In these usually benign waters, the monsoon winds blow from the northeast from November to March and somewhat less predictably from the southwest between May and September. Summer heat warms the continental landmasses north of the ocean. The hot air rises and creates a low-pressure zone at the earth’s surface, causing moisture-laden air from the sea to move into the low-pressure area. As this air climbs on rising air currents, rain-bearing clouds bring monsoon rains. In winter, the pattern reverses, for the ocean cools more slowly than the land. The winds now blow toward the ocean. ### L1885 description of a marsh society that requires boats for everything > When the Englishman Wilfred Thesiger lived among the Marsh Arabs of the south during the 1930s and ’40s, he found himself in an isolated world governed entirely by water. Anyone wanting to go anywhere had to step from their hut into a reed boat, even when just visiting a neighbor, let alone a nearby village. Reed boats thrived in the marshes and swamps of the south from the very earliest days of human occupation, perhaps as early as nine thousand years ago, when farmers moved onto the southern plains of Mesopotamia. Many communities made use of natural outcrops of asphalt to waterproof their boats, for the glutinous tar smeared on reeds makes for a waterproof seal. In the south, the marshes gave way to the Persian Gulf, a dynamic stretch of water whose shores changed constantly as sea levels rose after the Ice Age, when it had been little more than a narrow gulch. Anyone who lived along its shores would have been familiar with inshore waters, given that boats were about the only way of staying in contact with others with such harsh desert on land. Certainly, reed vessels with pitch-coated hulls could have paddled along the desolate Gulf shorelines and inside islands lying close offshore. Useful reference for [[Arais Delta]] ### L1899 > Mesopotamians had virtually no wood stocks except for palm trees, whose trunks have soft, pithy interiors, so they had to obtain planking from elsewhere. The nearest plentiful sources were on the Indian coast, beyond the Gulf of Oman, on the other side of the Arabian Sea. Not the cedars of the Levant in Phoenicia? See also: [[Mesopotamia]] & [[Phoenician|Phoenicia]] ### L1934 > Their vessels were like mobile bazaars, laden with foodstuffs and rolls of cloth, with cheap baubles and such prosaic items as axes and sickles. They traveled in short hops, following the same routes year after year, staying ashore when the southwesterlies blew strong, coasting east and west close inshore when the gentle northeasterlies returned. ### L1951 > We can imagine a weathered merchant ship with short mast and matting sail lying alongside wooden quays in the heart of Ur and Eridu, the crew hefting sacks of dates up the narrow gangplank, herding bleating goats aboard. The next morning, the laden vessel slips away with the light northern wind of dawn, bound for the Gulf. ### L2029 > Construction methods were very simple: the builder shaped the keel on the beach, then sewed horizontal planks to it with stout coir fibers passed through holes laboriously bored with simple hand drills near the edges of the flush-set planks. In 1185, the Arab writer Ibn Jubayr, visiting Basra, at the head of the Gulf, noted that boatbuilders thrashed the coir until it “becomes stringy, then they twist from it cords with which they stitch the ships.” They also strengthened the hull with strong ribs before adding the remaining planks, making for a flexible yet strong craft. For all this strengthening, sewn hulls were weaker than iron-fastened ones and leaked continually. Iron nails were known but were probably too expensive and required elaborate fabrication. A mixture of pitch or resin and whale oil caulked the coir-filled seams. Finally, fish oil sealed the planks. Villiers tells us this treatment made dhows extremely odoriferous, especially when partially decked, which trapped the smell belowdecks. NOTE: Arab boats of coconut or teak ### L2044 pros and cons of lateen vs square sails > Lateens, with their long leading edges, allow ships to sail much closer to the wind than square-sailed vessels. This was an obvious advantage for coastal merchant vessels working the light winds of the northeast monsoons close inshore. Lateens are not so efficient when running before the wind, which is why Portuguese caravels often replaced lateens with square sails in the Atlantic, with its trade winds. But the maneuverability of lateen-rigged vessels made them ideal for Indian Ocean traders, who often worked close inshore and in shallow water. The lateen has disadvantages, however. It is a large sail, which requires careful handling when tacking through the wind. The flapping yard and sail can overwhelm the crew as they wrestle with it, a potentially fatal misjudgment when altering course close to shore. Almost invariably, a dhow changes direction by turning in front of the wind rather than tacking through it, which requires laboriously bundling the sail and setting the yard on the other side of the mast. It is also difficult to reduce sail on such a craft. Many dhows used to carry two yards with different sails, the smaller one serving for rougher conditions. ### L2245 > The Cairo genizah reveals a world of competition and of occasional conflict, but also of remarkable collaboration that transcended geographic, ethnic, and religious boundaries. The Jewish Adeni traders who appear in the genizah documents were truly cosmopolitan. Of course, they maintained close ties with individuals who shared their faith in Egypt, India, and beyond, relying heavily on family and religious ties to conduct their business. However, the most important connections they maintained were with their Muslim and Hindu counterparts at home and far away over the horizon. Port cities such as Aden were the anchors of social connections that moved trade between India, Africa, Arabia, and the Mediterranean world. ### L2290 coastal trade among the Swahili > The coastal people also manufactured cake salt from seawater, much prized by subsistence farmers inland. Their ironworkers fabricated finished artifacts for the trade; cotton fabric and other baubles passed inland. The Swahili themselves rarely traveled inland. They relied on local groups, and also on hunters, who provided elephant ivory in exchange for cloth. Gold was harder to acquire, as the sources were far to the south, with dust and nuggets coming from the interior between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers. ### L2304 coral architecture on the Swahili coast > The new architecture was in mud and coral, then, by the thirteenth century, wholly in coral—stone houses, palaces, and other structures forming compact towns, often with courtyards. The switch to coral masonry may reflect the changing focus of the trade away from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, where coral buildings were in common use. Mangrove poles formed the ceilings, their length restricting the size of rooms, making small rooms a common feature of coastal architecture. I really need to do a deep dive on coral architecture for worldbuilding Magazine blog post ### the interrelationship between architecture, trade, and climate > Stone town architecture also reflected different groups within Swahili society, with waungwana, the oldest and most respected urban families, at the apex. Domestic social structure centered on the types of houses and where they were built, with a progression from the simple thatched hut through the lowest floors of multistory buildings to the pinnacle of society in the upper levels. This was, however, above all an African society, fortunate to be at a great crossroads of the vast global trade networks that relied on the monsoon winds and encompassed a good quarter of the earth. The predictability of the ocean and its winds brought an essential stability to the coastal towns. Swahili merchants could anticipate monsoon wind shifts and predict when dhow fleets would arrive and depart. They could accumulate cargoes in advance, arrange credit and take on debt, become wealthy, comfortable within a stable marketplace. The stone towns reflected this stability, with their fine houses, mosques, and civic buildings. NOTE: This is important for worldbuilders to understand: all the little details about how cities and towns are designed have implications for the broader world building context, the political context, the socioeconomic context, and all of those things are important for comprehending what kinds of conflicts will exist in your world, and you don't get good stories without interesting conflicts. ### L2324 isolated port cities have an easier time staying independent > For all their wealth, the stone towns remained independent from one another. The linear coast and limited water supplies militated against the formation of a single state. Instead, elite families maintained contact with one another and their trading partners at home and abroad. There were commercial and political alliances, the exchange of gifts, well-timed marriages, and, only rarely, military conflict. NOTE: Isolation in eastern Africa works similar to isolation in Greece and the Italian city-states of traders like Venice, it's hard to unite port cities when there are geographical obstacles between them like mountain ranges or desert. ### L2344 who China traded with in the 10th century > Word of East Africa’s valuable commodities had traveled as far as China as early as the tenth century, during Tang Dynasty times. At the time, China was one of the two great economic powerhouses of the monsoon world, the other being the Abbasid caliphate, ruling from Baghdad. I also care about the economy of "the monsoon world" worked. ### L2406 number of crewman for a Chinese trading ship > The Yongle Emperor organized his expeditions on a grand scale. In 1405, he ordered the construction of an imposing fleet, including some of the largest wooden ships ever built. Sixty-two large junks known as “treasure ships,” 225 support vessels, and no fewer than 27,780 men are said to have made up the first expedition. Big oceangoing vessels were nothing new in China by Zheng He’s time. When the Venetian traveler Marco Polo accompanied Princess Kokocin to Iran in 1292, he sailed with fourteen great ships, each with four masts. The Islamic traveler Ibn Battuta described large Chinese ships in 1347 that had twelve sails and carried a thousand men, of whom four hundred were soldiers. NOTE: Useful to note the number of people involved. ### l2509 tribute economy in China was sporadic in the era of Zheng He > Tribute had arrived but sporadically from the countries on Zheng He’s regular itinerary since the virtual cessation of diplomatic activity after 1422. Clearly, a display of overwhelming military power was the only way to maintain the kind of tributary relationships the Yongle Emperor had envisioned with Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. Given the distances involved, such relationships required massive shows of force that could be deployed only by sea. NOTE: I read a really interesting article about the tribute economy of [[China]] once that basically claimed that we don't really understand tribute economies well in the west. Are there any good examples I could use for [[Backwards Mapping Fiction]]? It's useful for [[Unusual Governments To Take Inspiration From]] too. #pkm/synthesize to [[economics]]. ### L2566 > There were no predictable shifts to allow an explorer safe passage home from an outward journey. Great storms could erupt any month of the year; pitiless rocks, strong tides, and onshore winds made pilotage close to land a risky venture even in calm summer weather. NOTE: I can use this to create CONFLICT in a story. This is a challenging environment for seafarers. This makes things hard for a sailor. #pkm/synthesize for difficult sailing conditions.