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Floating A Big Idea: Ancient Use Of Rafts To Transport Goods Demonstrated
Science Daily ^ | 3-22-2008 | MIT

Posted on 03/22/2008 11:08:17 AM PDT by blam

Floating A Big Idea: Ancient Use Of Rafts To Transport Goods Demonstrated

MIT students built a small-scale replica of an ancient oceangoing sailing raft to study its seaworthiness and handling. (Credit: Donna Coveney/MIT)

ScienceDaily (Mar. 22, 2008) — Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, according to new findings by MIT researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Details of how the ancient trading system worked more than 1,000 years ago were reconstructed largely through the efforts of former MIT undergraduate student Leslie Dewan, working with Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology Dorothy Hosler, of the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology (CMRAE).

The new work supports earlier evidence documented by Hosler that the two great centers of pre-European civilization in the Americas-the Andes region and Mesoamerica-had been in contact with each other and had longstanding trading relationships. That conclusion was based on an analysis of very similar metalworking technology used in the two regions for items such as silver and copper tiaras, bands, bells and tweezers, as well as evidence of trade in highly prized spondylus-shell beads.

Early Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch accounts of the Andean civilization include descriptions and even drawings of the large oceangoing rafts, but provided little information about their routes or the nature of the goods they carried.

In order to gain a better understanding of the rafts and their possible uses, Dewan and other students in Hosler's class built a small-scale replica of one of the rafts to study its seaworthiness and handling, and they tested it in the Charles River in 2004. Later, Dewan did a detailed computer analysis of the size, weight and cargo capacity of the rafts to arrive at a better understanding of their use for trade along the Pacific coast.

"It's a nontrivial engineering problem to get one of these to work properly," explained Dewan, who graduated last year with a double major in nuclear engineering and mechanical engineering. Although the early sketches give a general sense of the construction, it took careful study with a computerized engineering design program to work out details of dimensions, materials, sail size and configuration, and the arrangement of centerboards. These boards were used in place of a keel to prevent the craft from being blown to the side, and also provided a steering mechanism by selectively raising and lowering different boards from among two rows of them arranged on each side of the craft.

Although much of the raft design may have seemed familiar to the Europeans, some details were unique, such as masts made from flexible wood so that they could be curved downward to adjust the sails to the strength of the wind, the centerboards used as a steering mechanism, and the use of balsa wood, which is indigenous to Ecuador.

Dewan also analyzed the materials used for the construction, including the lightweight balsa wood used for the hull. Besides having to study the aerodynamics and hydrodynamics of the craft and the properties of the wood, cloth and rope used for the rafts and their rigging, she also ended up delving into some biology. It turns out that one crucial question in determining the longevity of such rafts had to do with shipworms-how quickly and under what conditions would they devour the rafts? And were shipworms always present along that Pacific coast, or were they introduced by the European explorers?

Shipworms are molluscs that can be the width of a quarter and a yard long. "Because balsa wood is so soft, and doesn't have silicates in it like most wood, they are able to just devour it very quickly," Dewan said. "It turns into something like cottage cheese in a short time."

That may be why earlier attempts to replicate the ancient rafts had failed, Dewan said. After construction, those replicas were allowed to sit near shore for weeks before the test voyages. "That's where the shipworms live," Dewan said. "One way to avoid that is to minimize the amount of time spent in harbor."

Dewan and Hosler did a simulation of the amount of time it would take for shipworms to eat one of the rafts and concluded that with proper precautions, it would be possible to make two round-trip voyages from Peru to western Mexico before the raft would need replacing.

The voyages likely took six to eight weeks, and the trade winds only permit the voyages during certain seasons of the year, so the travelers probably stayed at their destination for six months to a year each trip, Dewan and Hosler concluded. That would have been enough time to transfer the detailed knowledge of specific metalworking techniques that Hosler had found in her earlier research.

While Hosler's earlier work had shown a strong likelihood that there had been contact between the Andean and Mexican civilizations, it took the details of this new engineering analysis to establish that maritime trade between the two regions could indeed have taken place using the balsa rafts. "We showed from an engineering standpoint that this trip was feasible," Dewan said. Her analysis showed that the ancient rafts likely had a cargo capacity of 10 to 30 tons-about the same capacity as the barges on the Erie canal that were once a mainstay of trade in the northeastern United States.

Hosler said the analysis is "the first paper of its kind" to use modern engineering analysis to determine design parameters and constraints of an ancient watercraft and thus prove the feasibility of a particular kind of ancient trade in the New World. And for Dewan, it was an exciting departure from her primary academic work. "I just loved working on this project," she said, "being able to apply the mechanical engineering principles I've learned to a project like this, that seems pretty far outside the scope" of her work in nuclear engineering.

The findings are being reported in the Spring 2008 issue of the Journal of Anthropological Research.

Adapted from materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: ancient; dominiquegoerlitz; easterisland; germany; godsgravesglyphs; heyerdahl; moai; oceangoing; raft; rapanui; thorheyerdahl; transport
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1 posted on 03/22/2008 11:08:20 AM PDT by blam
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To: SunkenCiv

GGG Ping.


2 posted on 03/22/2008 11:08:41 AM PDT by blam (Secure the border and enforce the law)
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To: blam
Kon-Tiki
3 posted on 03/22/2008 11:11:00 AM PDT by BfloGuy (It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect . . .)
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To: BfloGuy

Thank you - Title should be

Univesity reinvents wheel.......


4 posted on 03/22/2008 11:16:43 AM PDT by ASOC (I know I don't look like much, but I raised a US Marine!)
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To: BfloGuy

You beat me to it....Heyerdahl goes over 4K+ miles on a raft across the Pacific in the late 40’s...MIT goes out for a half hour ride in a river....big deal.


5 posted on 03/22/2008 11:18:46 AM PDT by Alright_on_the_LeftCoast
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To: blam

Interesting, although there are some serious anomalies if the two groups of civilizations were in constant contact.

For instance, while corn native to Mexico made it to Peru, I don’t believe potatoes, native to Peru, made it to Mexico.

Also, writing was common in Mexico and unknown in Peru.

In many other ways the two civilizations are as different from each other as any two on earth.


6 posted on 03/22/2008 11:23:26 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves. - A. Lincoln)
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To: blam

The history channel had a special on big ships that were as big as a football field 1,000’s of years ago.


7 posted on 03/22/2008 11:26:15 AM PDT by edcoil (Go Great in 08 ... Slide into 09)
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To: blam
and the arrangement of centerboards. These boards were used in place of a keel to prevent the craft from being blown to the side, and also provided a steering mechanism by selectively raising and lowering different boards from among two rows of them arranged on each side of the craft.

Who writes this tripe?

8 posted on 03/22/2008 11:27:04 AM PDT by sionnsar (trad-anglican.faithweb.com |Iran Azadi| 5yst3m 0wn3d - it's N0t Y0ur5 (SONY) | UN: Useless Nations)
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To: blam
Wonder where they could have gotten this idea?


9 posted on 03/22/2008 11:28:14 AM PDT by Michael.SF. ("democrat" -- 'one who panders to the crude and mindless whims of the masses " - Joseph J. Ellis)
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To: blam; StayAt HomeMother; Ernest_at_the_Beach; 1ofmanyfree; 24Karet; 3AngelaD; 49th; ...

· join list or digest · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post a topic ·

 
Gods
Graves
Glyphs
Thanks Blam.

This is of course ridiculous. No one crossed large bodies of water until 1492. The Polynesians? They didn't get to those islands by boat, they were carried by the wind from elsewhere.

In case anyone needs it -- [sarcasm alert]

Nice to see someone actually getting down to work regarding this.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.
GGG managers are Blam, StayAt HomeMother, and Ernest_at_the_Beach
 

· Google · Archaeologica · ArchaeoBlog · Archaeology magazine · Biblical Archaeology Society ·
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo ·
· History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists ·


10 posted on 03/22/2008 11:36:01 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/______________________Profile updated Saturday, March 1, 2008)
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To: blam
Did somebody in that faculty read the Kon Tiki when they were stoned in the library and then thought that it was a very obscure thesis so they repeated it as some new and startling discovery?

How do they trot this crap out, anyway?
Are they going to float the idea that the Earth is not the center of the Solar System next?

11 posted on 03/22/2008 11:37:25 AM PDT by bill1952 (I will vote for McCain if he resigns his Senate seat before this election.)
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To: blam

So, once again, modern elitists have discovered that people thousands of years ago were actually intelligent and had a talent for engineering.


12 posted on 03/22/2008 11:37:28 AM PDT by Fresh Wind (Vaclav Klaus on global warming skeptics: "A whip of political correctness strangles their voice")
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To: blam

Sailors sail, archaeologists don’t. End of story.


13 posted on 03/22/2008 11:39:09 AM PDT by TexanToTheCore (If it ain't Rugby or Bullriding, it's for girls.........................................)
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To: BfloGuy
Kon-Tiki

You beat me to it. MIT students needed computer programs to design their rafts while the originals were probably slapped together in a couple days with what was on hand.

14 posted on 03/22/2008 11:39:47 AM PDT by mtbopfuyn (The fence is "absolutely not the answer" - Gov. Rick Perry (R, TX))
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To: blam

Equatorial waters are fairly calm and storm free, so rafts may have worked.


15 posted on 03/22/2008 11:46:05 AM PDT by Moonman62 (The issue of whether cheap labor makes America great should have been settled by the Civil War.)
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To: mtbopfuyn

In my library is the book Kon Tiki that solved these problems years ago. I feel guilty because I borrowed the book from my uncle and never returned it.


16 posted on 03/22/2008 11:46:22 AM PDT by bert (K.E. N.P. +12 . Never say never (there'll be a VP you'll like))
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To: Alright_on_the_LeftCoast
You beat me to it....Heyerdahl goes over 4K+ miles on a raft across the Pacific in the late 40’s...MIT goes out for a half hour ride in a river....big deal.

Yes, but think of all the self-esteem & "knowledge" that was generated! /sarcasm

17 posted on 03/22/2008 11:47:05 AM PDT by Tallguy (Tagline is offline till something better comes along...)
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To: ASOC

LOL! I read Kon-Tiki in hs, and that’s the first thing I thought of when I got the ping.


18 posted on 03/22/2008 11:51:13 AM PDT by Judith Anne (I have no idea what to put here. Not a clue.)
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To: Judith Anne

I read it in HS and OK.

Then, I read ot again as an adult. Thor was a Commando in WWII - as an adult, it was a story of a bunch kick-ass Commndo types taking on the ocean in a lttle raft.

And the ham part? They used an old WWII “Radio Swan” (spy) rig, too cool

I didn’t realize how much education I missed by going to High School...


19 posted on 03/22/2008 12:03:38 PM PDT by ASOC (I know I don't look like much, but I raised a US Marine!)
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To: ASOC

Hmmmmm....I guess it would be a good idea for me to read it again, too (with all the MO flooding), there are a bunch of books I need to re-read. I thought he was a really good-looking man, at the time, and the story was just fascinating.


20 posted on 03/22/2008 12:07:10 PM PDT by Judith Anne (I have no idea what to put here. Not a clue.)
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