The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine Read Free Book Online Page A

As a result, subsequent interpretations ofpre-Columbian South America were based on observations of a culture in crisis rather than on interaction with vibrant communities linked by extensive river-based networks of trade and transportation.
    At the time of European contact there were few long-range saltwater trading regimes anywhere in the Americas, and only two or three intermediate networks in what is now Latin America—one on the Pacific between Ecuador andGuatemala andMexico, and the others on the Caribbean. Researchers began investigating the former after noting similarities in a variety of cultural traits found in the two regions—more than eighteen hundred nautical miles apart—but nowhere in between, thus ruling out an overland route.Affinities in burial practices,ceramic styles, metallurgy, and decorative motifs, among other things, indicate that this maritime exchange could have begun as early as the mid-second millennium BCE . More certain,intermittent trade began in the late first millennium BCE and continued until the arrival of Europeans in the Americas. The exploitation of marine resources would have prepared fishermen for long-distance trade and might have inspired it in the first place: the opening of the sea route toMesoamerica may have been related to the need to get shells for trade to the Andes when native stocks declined due toEl Niño events or overfishing. In addition to being an exclusive source of a valued commodity and having direct access to inland trading partners, Ecuador has other advantages that favor its being a birthplace of long-distance sea trade in the Americas. Its equatorial location puts it at the meeting point of wind and current systems in the northern and southern hemispheres, and it has an abundance of wood and other materials for constructing oceangoing log rafts called
balsas
.
    Sixteenth-century Spanish observers identified a variety of South American craft that differed in size and function as well as in materials, construction techniques, and means of propulsion. Floats made of bundled reeds were found in all countries bordering the Pacific, both along the coast and in the mountain lakes—includingLake Titicaca, at an elevation of 3,800 meters, the highest lake in the world—as well as in westernArgentina andBolivia. Logboat canoes were found as far south as northern Ecuador. Natives of the desert coast of Chile had boats made from the inflated hides of seals and sea lions. The only vessels of complex construction were the
dalca,
a sewn-plank boat found in Chile between the Gulf of Coronado andTaitao Peninsula, and the sewn-bark canoes found from the Taitao Peninsula to the tip of the continent.
    The vessels of greatest interest to conquistadors and modern historians alike are the
balsas
, rafts fashioned from an odd number of balsa wood logs—seven, nine, or eleven—tied together and arranged so that the shortest were on the sides and the longest in the middle. According to a sixteenth-century Spanish official, “They are level with the water, which sometimes washes over them, so that passengers of importance cause planks to be installed over crosspieces, and thus they stay dry. At times they also have stakes and crossbeams set up like the sides of a cart, to keep children from falling overboard.… To keep the sun off they make a little hut of straw.”
Balsas
were propelled by paddles and one or two triangular fore-and-aft or, more rarely,square sails. By far the most novel detail noted by the Spanish was the steering mechanism, which was unlike anything ever devised in Eurasian waters.
Balsas
were steered not with an oar or rudder but by raising and lowering a series of dagger boards called
guares
set between the logs at intervals from stern to bow so that “By sinking some in the water, and raising others somewhat, they succeed in hauling the wind, falling off, and tacking, either coming about or jibing, and lying to, with appropriate maneuvers [of the
guares
]