Traveling Prehistoric Seas Dedicated to two Masters of Critical Thinking Joseph Needham and David Humiston Kelley Kelley on left, Needham on right Traveling Prehistoric Seas Critical Thinking on Ancient Transoceanic Voyages Alice Beck Kehoe First published 2016 by Left Coast Press, Inc. Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2016 Alice Beck Kehoe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks orregistered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kehoe, Alice Beck, 1934- Title: Traveling prehistoric seas : critical thinking on ancient transoceanic voyages / Alice Beck Kehoe. Other titles: Critical thinking on ancient transoceanic voyages Description: Walnut Creek, California : Left Coast Press, [2015] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015030609| ISBN 9781629580661 (hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629580678 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781629580692 (consumer ebook) Subjects: LCSH: America--Discovery and exploration--Polynesian. | America--Discovery and exploration--Pre-Columbian. | Discovery and exploration--History--To 1500. | Voyages and travel--History--To 1500. | Navigation--History--To 1500. Classification: LCC E109.P65 K45 2015 | DDC 970.01--dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015030609 ISBN 978-1-62958-066-1 hardback ISBN 978-1-62958-067-8 paperback Contents List of Illustrations 7 Preface 9 1. Critical Thinking Method 13 2. The Myth of Columbus 23 3. The Question of Boats 33 4. Peripatetic People 51 5. Polynesian Voyaging: Landfalls in the Americas 63 6. The Strongest Evidence: Plants and Animals 75 7. Technologies 87 8. Art, Architecture, and Mythology 109 9. The Atlantic World 135 10. Critically Examining pre-Columbian Seas 161 11. Dubitanda 173 Notes 183 References 191 Index 211 About the Author 217 5 David B. Quinn on Samuel Eliot Morison “The rejection of any pre-Columbian movement across the Atlantic apart from the Norse voyages leaves the ocean peculiarly empty for many centuries, but it is a justifiable reaction in an outstanding histo- rian whose great merit is that he sees sharply in black-and-white terms and is therefore uniquely qualified to expound what is already known. He is perhaps too impatient to study the nuances of pre-Columbian enterprise.” (Quinn, David B. 1974:22–23) Illustrations Figures Figure 2.1 European depiction of heroic Columbus encountering New World savages 25 Figure 2.2 Maliseet First Nation cartoon depicting European discoveries 27 Figure 2.3 Maliseet First Nation cartoon depicting opinion of Europeans 31 Figure 3.1 Map of Ocean Currents 34 Figure 3.2 Lombok raft 36 Figure 3.3 Tlingit logboats 38 Figure 3.4 Three principal shipbuilding traditions: Polynesian, Chinese, and European 39 Figure 4.1 Medieval traders 55 Figure 4.2 Figurine of medieval Norse abbott 57 Figure 4.3 Medieval pilgrims 58 Figure 5.1 Map of Polynesia/Southeast Asia 64 Figure 5.2 The Hōkūle`a, a full-size replica of a Polynesian Hawai‘ian voyaging canoe 68 Figure 5.3 Tonga voyaging canoe encountered by Dutch explorers, 1616 68 Figure 5.4 Rapa Nui’s famous giant statues 70 Figure 5.5 A Polynesian chicken in Hawai‘i 72 Figure 5.6 A Chumash tomolo (lashed-plank canoe) 74 7 8 Traveling Prehistoric Seas Figure 6.1 A Chinese hairless dog, “crested” variety, courtesy Animalia Life 85 Figure 7.1 Wheel-mounted toys from El Salvador and India 96 Figure 7.2 Mesoamerican and Asian guardian figures 97 Figure 8.1 Palace of Lord Pacal at Palenque, with pagodalike tower 113 Figure 8.2 Ekholm’s comparison of decorative panels from Maya Yucatán and Amarāvati, India 114 Figure 8.3 Lion-dog guardian statues at Wat Phnom, Phnom Penh, Cambodia 115 Figure 8.4 Sri Ranganathaswamy Temple in Srirangapattana, India 116 Figure 8.5 Hindu god Shiva, Chola period, India, c. 860–1279 CE, King of Maya kingdom of Copán, Honduras, c. 775 CE 118 Figure 8.6 Buddha using mudrā, God of dance with dancers, pictured in pre-conquest Maya Codex Borgia 119 Figure 8.7 Bakong, Angkor area, Cambodia, Temple of the Magician, Uxmal, Yucatán, Temple of the Inscriptions, Palenque, Mexico 121 Figure 8.8 Naga, Siem Reap, Cambodia 122 Figure 8.9 Corbelled roof buildings in temple precincts, Preah Khan in Cambodia and Chichén Itzá, Yucatán 123 Figure 8.10 Towers with huge human faces in Yucatán and Cambodia 125 Figure 8.11 Candi Sukuh temple in central Java, Indonesia, and Castillo temple, Chichén Itzá, Yucatán 126 Figure 9.1 Map of Atlantic Ocean 136 Figure 9.2 L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland, Canada 138 Figure 9.3 Newport Tower, Rhode Island, resembling medieval Norse towers, and scene from the Bayeux Tapestry 140 Figure 9.4 Olof Ohman’s Kensington runestone, Minnesota, 1927 143 Figure 9.5 Map of Vinette 1 pottery sites in Maritime Canada and Northeastern U.S. 148 Figure 9.6 Irish seagoing curragh, 17th century 150 Figure 9.7 Pyramid of the Niches, El Tajín, Mexico 154 Tables Table 3.1 Trans-Oceanic Crossings 46 Table 5.1 Ocean Distances 69 Table 8.1 Aztec Names of Days Compared With Chinese and Greek Lunar Animals 131 Preface y very first research project in archaeology was a paper for the M high school Science Talent Search competition. My topic was pre- Columbian transpacific contacts. Reading Kroeber’s massive 1948 text- book Anthropology, picked from the shelf in our public library, excited me with his demonstration of a Eurasian ecumene linked by spreads of all manner of things, from languages and crops to technologies and mythologies. I especially remember his discussion of depictions of the flying gallop, all four of a horse’s feet in the air, untrue to actual gallop. Kroeber didn’t think the pictures were merely visual illusions; he saw them to be evidence of diffusion of a pictorial convention. Decades later, Victor Mair (1988) published the diffusion of storyboards from India east to China and west to Europe. These were not world-shaking inventions, not like the spread of gunpowder that fascinated Joseph Needham (1986). These little devices clue us in to the almost infinite instances of person-to-person contacts across societies, most of them of little import, maybe assimilated. Ralph Linton gave us the mind-bog- gling accumulation of intersocietal borrowings that every ordinary American takes for granted as American (Linton 1931). Quite to my surprise, I was among the forty finalists in that year’s Science Talent Search; the Search wanted to broaden “science” beyond physics, chemistry, mathematics, and a little natural science. During our visit to Washington, D.C., for the final competition interviews, we were paired with practicing scientists in our fields of research. For me, it was Betty Meggers at the Smithsonian (because she was a woman, I think; she hadn’t yet published on transpacific contacts). Dr. Meggers was kind, and it was exciting to go behind scenes at the Smithsonian; 9 10 Traveling Prehistoric Seas that’s all I recall from the visit. That summer, I landed a job typing catalogs in the Anthropology Department at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, commuting from my parents’ home in a suburb. Once that task was completed, I still had three weeks before school started, and was given student-aide jobs helping curators. One of the curators was Gordon Ekholm. For my Talent Search paper, I had used Ekholm and Heine-Geldern’s publications. Their 1949 temporary exhibit in the American Museum was gone. I remember something like a catalog to it, but the Museum archivist couldn’t find any catalog or working plan for the exhibit. Did I tell Dr. Ekholm about my prize paper, did we discuss transpacific con- tacts? No, I was too shy and respectful to initiate scholarly discussion with a curator. What I did gain from two summers’ work and four years of student-aide volunteering while I was in college was solid respect for Dr. Ekholm. Several of the other curators in the department were strong personalities (Junius Bird, James Ford, Harry Tschopik, and of course, Margaret Mead); Ekholm was a hardworking, quiet man—a Minnesotan, he could have been from Lake Wobegon. One week, Rob- ert Heine-Geldern visited, very much the European gentleman profes- sor. From the student-aide’s corner, I could see that these two men were earnest, highly trained and experienced professionals. Their work mer- ited serious discussion. Through the decades since, I remained interested in pre-Columbian contacts, continental as well as marine. Evidence for trade routes thousands of miles long was frequent, but we were taught to look at pre-contact societies as self-contained in their regions, “primitive” trade as barter for pretties and signs of high status, and means of traveling forbidding- ly slow before European horses came in. Gradually, the more I came to know First Nations people—my dissertation was ethnographic, on orders from my Harvard professor concerned it might be assumed my husband wrote any archaeology I did—the more I became sensitized to the racism in the standard anthropological model. It’s unwitting, that idea of American natives taught beginning in kindergarten— early socialization—and continuing in history and literature courses through college.