Ah!
Let’s steelman that admittedly stretched analogy.
Let’s say you’re a neolithic hunter-gatherer, with some rudimentary agriculture of sorts. It’s not just finding some stuff that floats, you’ve got to develop the technology to build a boat that can survive pelagic conditions. It’ll probably be some sort of big, double-hull dugout canoe with a bridge-deck of some sort, and some kind of sail power. You’ll have a good knowledge of the night sky already, but you’ll have to apply that to navigation problems so you’re not sailing in circles.
Now for storing food and fresh water — you can’t just put that in a woven wicker basket, the grain will get soaked before you launch your ship, so you have to develop some kind of clay storage vessel (as was discussed in the piece posted).
All of that R+D, with stone, wood, and bone tools, and no math or written language is probably going to take more than one human lifetime, so you’ve got to figure out some way to transmit knowledge for the design team for at least two or three generations, all while fending of enemies, wild animals, and putting food on the hearth while you develop this wild as-yet-unheardof technology.
And yet, it was somehow within reach, but only barely as evidenced by how long it took to get from the mainland to the islands.
We won’t take another thousand years to get to Mars, or other places in the solar system, but is it really a bigger challenge, at least in terms of the human spirit? After all, we know Mars is there, and have a very good idea of what it’s like. We’re just choosing to not go because it’s either too expensive, too much trouble, or we don’t see the payoff.
Surely at least some of these Stone-Age mariners were driven by a spirit of adventure, a quest for glory perhaps, as they set sail into the rising sun?
Going to Mars is the result of an amalgamation of knowledge and experience stemming back to those ancient times. The Spirit of Exploration combined with innovation through the millenniums is how we go to Mars. The trip to Mars is the summation of what has gone before; therefore, the greatest of all of them.
“Surely at least some of these Stone-Age mariners were driven by a spirit of adventure, a quest for glory perhaps”
Then again, perhaps they were the second son of the area ruler, who had already given the woman he desired to his older brother. Part of the success of British colonialism was that only the oldest son could inherit estates. The younger sons had to go find some kind of job. Frequently the military, the priesthood, an overseas job, or an adventure like exploring.