How Could a Civilization that Managed to Sail to an Island forget how to make boats?

[supery00n]

@MaxTheVool

The real question to me is why anyone DID keep trading with Hawaii from Polynesia. No matter how good at navigating the polynesians were, an open-ocean voyage that long had to be INCREDIBLY dangerous and difficult. How much value would you have to get from some small-by-modern-standards vessels of trade goods (minus the space taken by provisions, water, rowers, etc.) in order to repeatedly take that much of a risk?

I think it’s one of those things that’s really hard to do the first time, and so would be an incredible risk the first time, but with the second and third attempts and so on, it becomes a routine, although still long and risky. But at least the risk of uncertainty; i.e. not knowing whether you’re actually going to reach land or just starve to death in the middle of the ocean is eliminated, provided that you follow exactly all of the directions that the guy who made it to Hawaii the first time around has given to the next generation of seafarers.

I think it’s similar to climbing Mount Everest. It’s really dangerous and risky, but because someone else has done it before us, we can just do what he did and hopefully it will work out for us. It’s also possibly a social status thing; if you’re navigating the oceans and bringing back cool stuff from another island that nobody can see, then you’re probably going to be seen as a leader and be rewarded for that.

[supery00n]

@snowthx

There is some theory that they did make it to S. America. It is documented that the Polynesians brought sweet potatoes to Hawaii - a crop originating in S. America. How did that happen?

“When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains–however improbable–must be the truth.” - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I think if Hawaii really never had sweet potatoes, and South America was the only place where it was a native plant, then we’d have to accept that the Polynesians actually made it to South America and then brought the sweet potatoes from there back.

[supery00n]

@Robot_Arm

I wonder if prevailing wind patterns have something to do with it as well. It’s a lot easier to make a boat sail downwind than upwind. The Canaries look to be in the right latitudes for the trade winds, predominantly east-to-west. Getting from the mainland to the islands would be easier than getting back.

supery00n, how much do you know about the history of the Canaries? After they were settled, was there regular contact with people from mainland Africa for some time? If that contact stopped, it seems that not only did the islanders lose the ability to travel to the mainland, but the mainlanders lost the ability (or the interest) to visit the islands.

And how skilled were they at making tools? You say there was plenty of wood on the islands to make boats out of, but you need other things, too. Maybe they only brought one ax from the mainland when they settled. Once that wore out, all the trees in the world aren’t going to help you build a boat.

I don’t know too much about the history, and I don’t think anyone really knows exactly how long ago they first arrived at the Canary Islands. You make a good point in observing that a loss of connection between an island and the mainland presupposes both the islanders being unable or uninterested in the islanders reaching the mainland and the mainlanders reaching the island, and not merely the former.

I am speculating that the loss of contact between the Canary Islands and mainland Africa could have been as long as that of the isolation between Tasmania and Australia; i.e. over 10,000 years.

[Musicat]

@ralph124c

Why didn’t the polynesians continue on to N/S America? Islands are limited-resources are easily depleted, and living too close to your neighbors provoke quarrels. Are there any places on these continents showing evidence of colonization?

I think it was an incredible feat that the Polynesians made it to Easter Island at all, and it was post-AD by the time they did (ca. 700AD, IIRC). The distance from Easter Island to South America is even greater than their previous leg and the chance of anyone making it alive, slimmer than slim. Maybe they tried and failed, or maybe, if Cook and the Europeans hadn’t shown up, they would have tried again and made it five thousand years later. Polynesia wasn’t settled overnight, either.

[MaxTheVool]

@supery00n

I think it’s one of those things that’s really hard to do the first time, and so would be an incredible risk the first time, but with the second and third attempts and so on, it becomes a routine, although still long and risky.

Except that even ignoring the navigation aspect of it, there’s the becalming or storm-sinking-your-boat or no-rain-so-you-die-of-thirst aspect, etc. Also, the longer a voyage is, the less economically and socially advantageous it becomes for any number of reasons… more provisions means you can carry less trade goods, longer round trip means that you can make fewer voyages per year or per decade, meaning that social ties loosen, etc. Fewer voyages mean that there’s less chance to train up the next generation of navigators, etc.