Table Of ContentTraveling Prehistoric Seas
Dedicated to two Masters of Critical Thinking
Joseph Needham and David Humiston Kelley
Kelley on left, Needham on right
Traveling
Prehistoric Seas
Critical Thinking on Ancient Transoceanic Voyages
Alice Beck Kehoe
First published 2016 by Left Coast Press, Inc.
Published 2016 by Routledge
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Copyright © 2016 Alice Beck Kehoe
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kehoe, Alice Beck, 1934-
Title: Traveling prehistoric seas : critical thinking on ancient transoceanic
voyages / Alice Beck Kehoe.
Other titles: Critical thinking on ancient transoceanic voyages
Description: Walnut Creek, California : Left Coast Press, [2015] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015030609| ISBN 9781629580661 (hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781629580678 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629580692 (consumer
ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: America--Discovery and exploration--Polynesian. |
America--Discovery and exploration--Pre-Columbian. | Discovery and
exploration--History--To 1500. | Voyages and travel--History--To 1500. |
Navigation--History--To 1500.
Classification: LCC E109.P65 K45 2015 | DDC 970.01--dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015030609
ISBN 978-1-62958-066-1 hardback
ISBN 978-1-62958-067-8 paperback
Contents
List of Illustrations 7
Preface 9
1. Critical Thinking Method 13
2. The Myth of Columbus 23
3. The Question of Boats 33
4. Peripatetic People 51
5. Polynesian Voyaging: Landfalls in the
Americas 63
6. The Strongest Evidence: Plants and
Animals 75
7. Technologies 87
8. Art, Architecture, and Mythology 109
9. The Atlantic World 135
10. Critically Examining
pre-Columbian Seas 161
11. Dubitanda 173
Notes 183
References 191
Index 211
About the Author 217
5
David B. Quinn on Samuel Eliot Morison
“The rejection of any pre-Columbian movement across the Atlantic
apart from the Norse voyages leaves the ocean peculiarly empty for
many centuries, but it is a justifiable reaction in an outstanding histo-
rian whose great merit is that he sees sharply in black-and-white terms
and is therefore uniquely qualified to expound what is already known.
He is perhaps too impatient to study the nuances of pre-Columbian
enterprise.” (Quinn, David B. 1974:22–23)
Illustrations
Figures
Figure 2.1 European depiction of heroic Columbus encountering
New World savages 25
Figure 2.2 Maliseet First Nation cartoon depicting European
discoveries 27
Figure 2.3 Maliseet First Nation cartoon depicting opinion of
Europeans 31
Figure 3.1 Map of Ocean Currents 34
Figure 3.2 Lombok raft 36
Figure 3.3 Tlingit logboats 38
Figure 3.4 Three principal shipbuilding traditions: Polynesian, Chinese,
and European 39
Figure 4.1 Medieval traders 55
Figure 4.2 Figurine of medieval Norse abbott 57
Figure 4.3 Medieval pilgrims 58
Figure 5.1 Map of Polynesia/Southeast Asia 64
Figure 5.2 The Hōkūle`a, a full-size replica of a Polynesian Hawai‘ian
voyaging canoe 68
Figure 5.3 Tonga voyaging canoe encountered by Dutch explorers,
1616 68
Figure 5.4 Rapa Nui’s famous giant statues 70
Figure 5.5 A Polynesian chicken in Hawai‘i 72
Figure 5.6 A Chumash tomolo (lashed-plank canoe) 74
7
8 Traveling Prehistoric Seas
Figure 6.1 A Chinese hairless dog, “crested” variety, courtesy Animalia
Life 85
Figure 7.1 Wheel-mounted toys from El Salvador and India 96
Figure 7.2 Mesoamerican and Asian guardian figures 97
Figure 8.1 Palace of Lord Pacal at Palenque, with pagodalike tower 113
Figure 8.2 Ekholm’s comparison of decorative panels from Maya
Yucatán and Amarāvati, India 114
Figure 8.3 Lion-dog guardian statues at Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh,
Cambodia 115
Figure 8.4 Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangapattana, India 116
Figure 8.5 Hindu god Shiva, Chola period, India, c. 860–1279 CE, King
of Maya kingdom of Copán, Honduras, c. 775 CE 118
Figure 8.6 Buddha using mudrā, God of dance with dancers, pictured in
pre-conquest Maya Codex Borgia 119
Figure 8.7 Bakong, Angkor area, Cambodia, Temple of the Magician,
Uxmal, Yucatán, Temple of the Inscriptions, Palenque,
Mexico 121
Figure 8.8 Naga, Siem Reap, Cambodia 122
Figure 8.9 Corbelled roof buildings in temple precincts, Preah Khan in
Cambodia and Chichén Itzá, Yucatán 123
Figure 8.10 Towers with huge human faces in Yucatán and Cambodia 125
Figure 8.11 Candi Sukuh temple in central Java, Indonesia, and Castillo
temple, Chichén Itzá, Yucatán 126
Figure 9.1 Map of Atlantic Ocean 136
Figure 9.2 L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada 138
Figure 9.3 Newport Tower, Rhode Island, resembling medieval Norse
towers, and scene from the Bayeux Tapestry 140
Figure 9.4 Olof Ohman’s Kensington runestone, Minnesota, 1927 143
Figure 9.5 Map of Vinette 1 pottery sites in Maritime Canada and
Northeastern U.S. 148
Figure 9.6 Irish seagoing curragh, 17th century 150
Figure 9.7 Pyramid of the Niches, El Tajín, Mexico 154
Tables
Table 3.1 Trans-Oceanic Crossings 46
Table 5.1 Ocean Distances 69
Table 8.1 Aztec Names of Days Compared With Chinese and Greek
Lunar Animals 131
Preface
M y very first research project in archaeology was a paper for the
high school Science Talent Search competition. My topic was pre-
Columbian transpacific contacts. Reading Kroeber’s massive 1948 text-
book Anthropology, picked from the shelf in our public library, excited
me with his demonstration of a Eurasian ecumene linked by spreads
of all manner of things, from languages and crops to technologies and
mythologies. I especially remember his discussion of depictions of the
flying gallop, all four of a horse’s feet in the air, untrue to actual gallop.
Kroeber didn’t think the pictures were merely visual illusions; he saw
them to be evidence of diffusion of a pictorial convention. Decades
later, Victor Mair (1988) published the diffusion of storyboards from
India east to China and west to Europe. These were not world-shaking
inventions, not like the spread of gunpowder that fascinated Joseph
Needham (1986). These little devices clue us in to the almost infinite
instances of person-to-person contacts across societies, most of them of
little import, maybe assimilated. Ralph Linton gave us the mind-bog-
gling accumulation of intersocietal borrowings that every ordinary
American takes for granted as American (Linton 1931).
Quite to my surprise, I was among the forty finalists in that year’s
Science Talent Search; the Search wanted to broaden “science” beyond
physics, chemistry, mathematics, and a little natural science. During
our visit to Washington, D.C., for the final competition interviews, we
were paired with practicing scientists in our fields of research. For me,
it was Betty Meggers at the Smithsonian (because she was a woman, I
think; she hadn’t yet published on transpacific contacts). Dr. Meggers
was kind, and it was exciting to go behind scenes at the Smithsonian;
9
