Dewan's team is preparing to sail a small balsa raft between Boston and Provincetown, Massachusetts, this spring. Their ultimate goal is to construct an actual-size model for the trip from Ecuador to Mexico. -- just as they theorize it was done 1,300 years ago.Okay, I'm not a sailor -- but I'm pretty sure that the conditions of the North Atlantic and Cape Cod Bay in spring are not the same as the Pacific Ocean at the equator - where Ecuador is located.
Ergo, this experiment will prove exactly what if the conditions aren't the same?
The lack of copper metalworking in the Central American area might have something to do with the lack of copper.
I doubt these traders mysteriously sailed direct to western Mexico and miraculously found they had reached another copper rich area.
In all probability, the rafts followed the coast for years, extending their range and trading as they went until they reached the copper rich areas.
That if you drop a few thousand dollars in supplies to make a raft and write it up in a scholarly magazine, you can parlay that into a multi-hundred-thousand dollar free "research" trip in the tropics!
Brilliant really, if you look at in in the right light...