It might cover two-thirds of our world, but we barely see the sea. Take out an atlas, and every land feature is marked, yet the blue expanse around us might as well be a blank. To our distant ancestors, lacking GPS or even sextants, the negotiation of this vast element was both fearful and empowering. The sea offered trade and adventure, life and death in equal measure.
Brian Fagan, a British-born emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of California, has a passion for the sea. A great sailor himself, his book takes us deep into prehistory as he investigates how we began to navigate the oceans.
It is a fascinating story. From the Polynesian and Aboriginal peoples to the “Monsoon World” of the Indian Ocean, from the classical world’s Mediterranean trade routes to the Atlantic adventures of the northern peoples, this is history on a grand scale.
Forty thousand years ago, the Aboriginal people saw the sea in the way they saw the land, as “Sea Dreaming”. To them it was a watery world mapped out from the stars; “seascapes of memory” that reached back into a distant, uncharted past. They discerned their routes from natural signs: “The Pleiades appear at the coldest time of the year, when the highly prized dugong moves inshore seeking warmer water”. The subtle change in the colour of the water was as much a navigational aid to them as the electronic screens we use today.
Early people relied on nature to provide their craft, too. Polynesian and Middle Eastern vessels were made from hollowed-out logs, reeds and bamboo, waterproofed with fish oil or, in the case of the Mesopotamians, asphalt from the tar pits. Instead of compasses they relied on the sun and stars. They even sensed changes in the swelling sea from their swinging testicles.
Out of such intuitive techniques, entire empires grew. The Mediterranean cultures used islands as stepping stones to trade. The Phoenicians excelled, venturing as far as Cornwall to buy valuable tin, keeping their sources secret to create their own monopoly. The fetching of such cargoes incurred enormous risks, but their retrieval brought great rewards.
Navigation also enabled conquest. Alexander the Great had flat-pack boats loaded onto his larger ships, while the Romans employed bulk carriers, like modern container ships, to service their martial empire, “shipping grain and luxuries on a grand scale”, as Fagan notes.
Meanwhile, even more fabulous cargoes were being brought out of Africa on Egyptian barges, laden with ebony, ivory, gold, incense and leopard skins. The rise of Islamic culture in the 7th century saw an equivalent commercial expansion in the Indian Ocean, as Arab seafarers inherited earlier commercial traffic to trade in tusks portered by slaves along the “Swahili Corridor” of East Africa. It was an efficient, cynical exercise in exploitation, in which both commodities and men were to be sold.
But all of this paled into insignificance against the gigantic Chinese expeditions commanded by Zheng He in the early 15th century. With fleets of ocean-going fortresses with 12 sails and 1,000 men, 440ft long and 180ft broad, these ventures resemble more a nation on the move than a mere armada charting new lands. Yet it was an amazingly brief effort, for all its scale and stupendous effort. As China turned in on itself, subsequent emperors had records of the expeditions destroyed, since they were “deceitful engagements of bizarre things”. How ironic, then, that so much of our modern trade is conducted in containers from China.
Even more fascinating is Fagan’s account of early Atlantic navigation – ventures based on ritual and belief as much as on trade and invasion. Menhirs and barrows were built to be seen from the sea, much as later sailors used tall buildings such as church spires to negotiate the European coast. Fagan identifies the oldest boatyard in the world, on the banks of the Humber River, where a hollowed oak hull was found with wood chips still lying on the ground around it.
Perhaps the most exciting stories in Beyond the Blue Horizon come from even farther north. Norse navigators may have used “sunstones”, calcite crystals that depolarised the rays of the sun so that it could be seen even through cloud, and thus guide their way. Such technology allowed Viking longships to travel as far as “Vinland” – which many now think may have been the coast of Cape Cod.
Meanwhile, the Aleut Indians on the Alaskan peninsula were literally sewn into their skin-covered canoes or baidarkas, their faces painted with a mixture of oxide pigments and whale oil as sun and salt-screen. Barely distinguishable from sea mammals, their craft were supremely swift and manoeuvrable – although on land their occupants could barely walk upright, having spent most of their lives with their bodies bent double in their boats.
It is in these vignettes that Fagan’s book excels. Radically, the author recommends that his separate chapters do not need to be read sequentially, but can be negotiated ocean by ocean. “Like the Norse with their sense of aefinyr [adventure], their restless curiosity, the choices for maritime exploration are yours.”
Given such an experimental approach, it is a pity that his book – as published here in its original US edition – is so conventionally designed and produced. Publishers need to match the ambitions of such adventurous authors. More than ever, books have to be attractive objects in their own right if they’re to hold their own in a digital age.
Bloomsbury, £20, 336pp
1 Passage to Juneau by Jonathan Raban (1999). A fascinating account of one man’s journey up the north-west coast of America.
2 Atlantic by Simon Winchester (2010). Supreme overview of the history of an ocean which formed the western world.
3 The Fabled Coast by Sophia Kingshill and Jennifer Westwood (2012). An enthralling compendium of maritime legends and trad