Ecological contingency in very early offshore seafaring

Summary

Recent interest in accounting for very early offshore seafaring, generally from about 15,000 to 50,000 years ago, but in some cases extending up to one million years ago, has seen arguments for and against the influence of biogeographic factors, human behavioural ecology, and advances in cognition, language and technical expertise. I suggest that the seafaring milieu, as a natural system taking in conditions for offshore passages and the availability of resources for making offshore-capable boats, amongst other things, remains a particularly important factor. I consider comparative examples of offshore seafaring, as deduced from island colonization in Southeast Asia, East Asia and South America, to argue that very early seafaring offshore suggests an influential role for ecological contingency.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Model Environments: Human Ecodynamics on Islands

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