A ngalawa.Credit: Lucy Blue
Posted on 05/16/2022 5:19:06 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
The first detailed academic study of East African maritime traditions shows changes in boatbuilding techniques but the continuing use of wooden vessels by fishers.
Researchers have used photogrammetry technology to document the watercraft using the Zanzibar Channel, on which so many livelihoods depend.
Large local vessels—the mtepe, dau la mtepe, and even the larger jahazis—have long left the Zanzibar Channel because of the development of modern transport infrastructure, the end of the mangrove-pole trade, and the changing political economy of the wider Indian Ocean...
The small-scale artisanal fishing sector is buoyant, largely reflecting population growth, leading to falling stocks and soaring catch rates in inshore waters...
Scholars had warned the wooden watercrafts in East Africa would decline and disappear. The large oceangoing vessels of the monsoon trade—connecting Somalia, southern Arabia, the Arabia-Persian Gulf and South Asia—have been absent for more than 50 years.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
A ngalawa.Credit: Lucy Blue
Interesting article.....however, written by some dumb-ass millenial working on a thesis......his/her conclusion: these people would rather have an outboard motor than a sail. All that time and money spent just to find that out.
That is pretty good... :)
If memory serves, in the 1970s (or perhaps early 80s) Nat Geo had an article about the dhow, and the map tuck that month was one of those nice illustrated chart of where each kind originated.
Right? No one else seemed to pick that up....LOL...I am glad that you caught the same point of the article
Almost all these projects are like that. :)
They really don’t care about what they find, or if it is even practical productive knowledge. It is all about the marketing and fund raising.
And how you worded it was right on the money... lol
But!!!......this” illustrious academic team” was, in the end, able to justify their continued existence to whomever funds their work.....sad but true. Sad.
Yep... That is about it. But if they do start to find something that might buck the official narrative they will quickly to lose that funding and the study is buried.
Then why fund it in the first place if they didn’t want real new answers? Because the whole thing is a scam to skim off 80% of the funds for a dingbat study and appropriate them elsewhere, like administration.
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