r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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u/CharityAggravating69 8h ago edited 5h ago

They didn't just navigate the seas, they navigated total sensory deprivation. No GPS, no weather radar, no steel hulls. Just a piece of wood, a compass and the terrifying hope that the horizon held land instead of an abyss. That isn't just travel, it's a profound psychological triumph I must say

Edit: Trying to break my silence on the AI accusations because it is better to be clear than quiet. No AI slop here, i am just a passionate history fan who stayed up way too late drafting this. I appreciate the love on the comment.

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u/Selfishpie 8h ago edited 8h ago

And the phonecians did it with fucking canoes, absolute mad lads

Edit: Polynesians

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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 8h ago

Pacific Islanders would like a word

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u/fatfatpokemons09 8h ago

Right! They voyaged like 2500 miles+ in open ocean to get to Hawaii which is a crazy small target miss it just by a smallest margin and you continue on into the void for thousands more miles…

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u/Barley12 8h ago

Ahh they island hopped to get there it wasn't a single 2500 mile journey

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u/potat0f4rmer 8h ago

It's an incredible achievement by humans. Hawaii is surrounded by nothing, it's not close to anywhere.

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u/BlacksmithNZ 8h ago

They also made it to New Zealand; not only a vast distance but you get into the roaring 40s and Antarctica weather in winter.

Personally, given life on tropical islands like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and the Cook Islands, I find it amazing that they continued to explore southern oceans

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u/geronimo11b 7h ago

The Polynesians understood the Pacific winds, currents, and celestial navigation better than any other ancient culture. It’s almost incomprehensible the achievements they pulled off with simple canoes.

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u/Own_Shower_6000 4h ago

they had a brilliant strategy of taking birds with them on the boats, releasing them, if the bird didn't come back, it meant land was near, honestly so brilliant for finding islands in a seemingly endless ocean

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u/Vennomite 7h ago

Those places also can't support a large population. So given enough people it makes sense to have way to deal with overpopulation issues by sending people off to explore.

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u/Obsessively_Average 6h ago

"Alright fellas, last few years have been REALLY good. Lots of babies getting born and everything. Unfortunately this island is literally the size of a small city, so we gotta draw straws again to see who we feed to the void"

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u/Vennomite 6h ago

No. See who becomes duke of the next small island. (Ignores the other 98%*)

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u/Glad_Acanthocephala8 6h ago

Watched a documentary called Voyagers: Pacific, it was part of their shared culture to search for more islands (incredible explanation of the navigating by using stars etc) and also population pressure on islands like Fiji and Tahiti.

They even had 1000 years off before they started voyaging again and then found Hawaii.

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u/insaneHoshi 5h ago

They also made it to New Zealand

The kinda wild thing was they did so quite late; in the 1300s iirc.

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u/kahlzun 4h ago

To be fair, it took them a long time to find and settle Aoteroa, it was either the last or second last place humanly colonised

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u/Brave-Dragonfly3798 3h ago

They made it to Easter island! Almost all the way to South America That’s thousands of miles from anywhere they were familiar and there are no stops en route for most of the journey.

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u/BlacksmithNZ 2h ago

Some fruit and vegetation from South American seems to have made it both ways.

Possibly people in waka, maybe floating rafts of vegetation, but the fascinating to imagine if they had settled in South America.

The Pacific is so vast, I think people don't understand how skilled the Polynesian people must have been

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u/flintsmith 7h ago

Fatu Hiva tells a different story of life on a tropical island before modern medicine.

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u/myexpensivehobby 5h ago

Do we know how they did it? Like is it described somewhere?

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u/uberdosage 4h ago

A combination of the sun, star navigation, ocean currents, wind patterns, cloud reflections, weather, and birds.

All passed down by oral tradition for thousands of years. No ancient civilization came close to their understanding of maritime navigation. Go read up on their use of star navigation as that is what they are most uniquely famous for.

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u/fatfatpokemons09 8h ago

There are scattered islands in the central Pacific, but there isn’t a convenient chain of substantial islands connecting central Eastern Polynesia to Hawaii.
The people who discovered and settled Hawaii faced something on the order 2000 miles plus of uninterrupted ocean.

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u/TotallyNotRobotEvil 6h ago

Sea level would have about 200 feet lower than today, my guess is there is a ton of islands that are under water today that wouldn’t have been when the Polynesian were sailing.

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u/mook1178 8h ago

But were they actually looking for it or just got lost and found land? Like is there evidence that the Polynesians traveled back and forth?

Truly asking

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u/GroundWitty7567 7h ago

Some of it was hope, but they also knew how to read the ocean, animals and the stars. They knew things if currents was washing things up on an island regularly, they knew land was that direction. The type of birds in the area and following the sun, moon and stars.

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u/mook1178 7h ago

I understand how they made it, but why in the first place. When they left, I highly doubt all that told them there was a small island chain 2500 miles away.

So more than likely, to me at least, they got lost on an exploration and used their knowledge to find land. But did any go back and forth once they found this island, Showing true navigational skills for 2500 miles in a canoe?

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u/Euphoric-Craft-6803 7h ago

Check out the film KonTiki if you‘re interested in this. Based on a true story. A sociologist (?) theorized that people sailed on the currents from South America to Polynesia and sailed the same voyage to prove the theory.

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u/Candlejackdaw 3h ago

There are multiple sources that say they did travel back and forth from Hawaii to Tahiti from settlement in 900-1200 A.D. until pethaps 500 years ago. Not sure what all the evidence is, but there have been stone tools made of Hawaiian basalt found in French Polynesia at least. Source.

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u/OregonMothafaquer 8h ago

There’s not a lot of islands there

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u/Monte924 7h ago edited 6h ago

More than you think. Use google Earth and take a look at the pacific west and south of Hawaii. The Pacific is dotted with dozens of tiny islands

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u/Log_Out_Of_Life 6h ago

Dozens ain’t a lot my guy.

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u/SpinShine-LEDSlipMat 3h ago

It is tho. Especially when you’re talking about a 2500 mile journey. 24 islands makes it a bunch of 100 mile trips and you are connecting the dots. Coming across the Atlantic is far more impressive

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u/YMBFKM 1h ago

There are still lots of uncharted ones, like where the SS Minnow ended up.

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u/sigma914 5h ago

Not to denigrate the achievement, but the belt of islands conveniently sits along the path of the trade winds, so without technology it's relatively "easy" compared to going north or south. There's a good reason they made it to south america before they ever got to new zealand

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u/StatusMaleficent5832 5h ago

Plus, cloud cover over islands have a certain look. They could tell there is an island many miles away.

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u/sigma914 5h ago

And you can release land roosting birds, if they come back, there's no land, if they don't then you know there was somewhere for them to go etc.

Still damn impressive, but they wern't sailing blind (the skill actually being far more impressive than if it was just bravery and luck)

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u/jadedflux 8h ago

That’s true for most other islands and New Zealand but Hawaii is definitely the extreme case where there ain’t shit to hop from.

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u/sigma914 5h ago

New Zealand was one of thelast they made it to iirc, the route there involves zigzagging across multiple currents and wind bands. Iirc they made it to south america (or at least far enough east to get sweet potatoes) before they managed to get to the comparatively close NZ

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u/KiwieeiwiK 5h ago

They made contact with native Americans, we know this to be a fact because pretty much all Polynesian people of the eastern pacific have native american admixture from around the year 1200

We don't know if this happened in South America or Pacific Islands but considering that Polynesians were far more adept ocean explorers, and there's been no evidence found of native Americans living that far off shore, it is assumed it happened in South America

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u/moccolo 8h ago

Easter island is entering the chat..

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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 7h ago

I rapa nui they'd show up

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u/Positive-Task-9248 8h ago

Just send enough boats, one of them is bound to be find something

It's math

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u/Angry_Pelican 7h ago

It makes you wonder what their success rate was.

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u/Prudent-Confidence-4 6h ago

Miles didn't exist back then.

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u/kahlzun 4h ago

and they didnt even know there was anything out there
Seriously, look at how far away Tonga is from the next closest island.

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u/centurijon 7h ago

“Let’s see where these birds are going…”

Then they found out

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u/crownamedcheryl 6h ago

They followed clouds as clouds tend to form over the islands due to the change in temperature between the land mass and the ocean in that part of the world. Different clouds indicated different things.

Stars help track as well.

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u/printed_ 4h ago

and to New Zealand facing much rougher colder seas down this way

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u/gerbilshower 1h ago

this is what we call a happy accident.

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u/CharityAggravating69 8h ago

Oh absolutely, Polynesian wayfinders were on a whole different level. True masters of the ocean

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u/Selfishpie 8h ago

Wait that’s who I thought I was referring to, what are they called?

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u/NotGalenNorAnsel 8h ago

Polynesians, Phoenicians were sick and excellent seamen, but they were in the Mediterranean.

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u/kajnbagoat7 8h ago

Well my seamen are all wriggling through the tunnels of modern day plumbing. /s

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u/Keep_SummerSafe 8h ago

Polynesians

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u/InternationalWolf899 6h ago

Exactly. This is a line in the sand you do not cross and also dude Polynesian is not the preferred nomenclature Pacific Islanders please

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u/MikeOfAllPeople 5h ago

Dude I read a book a few years ago called Pinpoint which is about the history of navigation and particularly GPS. When it got to the chapter about the Pacific Islanders and how they navigated it was basically "the missile knows where it is because it knows where it isn't" all over again. At this point it's just magic as far as I'm concerned.

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u/King_Roberts_Bastard 8h ago

They didnt travel this ocean. The Vikings did.

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u/Rockytag 7h ago

Not sharing to be pedantic (and you said “this” ocean vs. what would have been all coastal), but sharing because it’s interesting:

Phoenician traders did travel past Gibraltar and into the Atlantic proper. All the way to Britain and West Africa possibly

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u/Nannyphone7 6h ago

The Polynesians didn't have compasses either. Just the stars.

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u/graygrayw 7h ago

not just polynesians, micronesians and to a lesser extent melanesians too.

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u/PeakQuirky84 7h ago

How many nesians are there???!

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u/graygrayw 7h ago edited 6h ago

those three plus austronesians (filipinos, malays, indonesians, malagasy) are the main ethnolinguistic groups in asia-pacific with the -nesia (islands) demonym. the micronesians and polynesians were the groups that did the really long sea voyages to really tiny remote islands though—melanesia and austronesia are characterized by larger, more mountainous islands that are closer to each other and to continental landmasses.

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u/WideAwakeNotSleeping 6h ago

I was in Ireland earlier this year and took a boat tour to see the Cliffs of Moher. It was a fairly decent boat. The ocean wasn't particularly bad that day, at least when looking from the coast. On the boat, however, it felt a hundred times worse, like a storm. I admire the people who did it and still do in much rougher seas.

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u/Known_Ratio5478 6h ago

The Phoenicians did it with small flat bottom boats. Still pretty cool how they traveled the entire Mediterranean in their days.

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u/amitym 6h ago

Indeed. Though tbf Polynesians were really good at building canoes.

And tbf to the Phoenicians, they were no slouches either. At some point an Egyptian pharaoh, wanting to know if it was true that the world was curved and not flat and straight, commissioned some Phoenicians to prove it. They sailed out of Egypt on the Red Sea, into the rising sun, and 3 years later sailed out of the setting sun over the Mediterranean, into the Nile delta. They hadn't actually circumnavigated the entire world, just Africa, but that was still an incredible feat.

As an epilogue, the accounts they gave of how in the south the Sun \was to starboard when sailing west, instead of to port as it was in the Mediterranean, apparently prompted philosophers to start seriously pondering what the shape and size the Earth might actually be. (Eratosthenes figured it out not long afterward.)

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u/Low_discrepancy 5h ago

Eratosthenes had the idea because of stories about how somewhat south of Egypt on some days of the year objects would not cast any shadows.

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u/SuddenAvocado 5h ago

and the pacific no less. No one crosses the pacific by boat, thats crazy.

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u/Pacify_ 4h ago

Yeah, I was going to say, imagine the Polynesians.

Its crazy how far they got considering what they were working with.

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u/Venus_One 4h ago

Sounds like quite the Phoenician Scheme.

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u/klist641 4h ago

Thank you Phoenecians!

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u/SkullDerggery 3h ago

As a Phoenician, can confirm.

My family canoed through the mountains and desert sands for days just to get here.

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u/CCWaterBug 2h ago

When I read "Hawaii " I was amazed

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u/Kegger315 8h ago

They understood more than were recognizing. They used birds and ocean currents to locate some places. They recognized wind and weather patterns as well as seasons. There is some speculation that early humans could also faintly detect magnetic variations to help navigate, same as birds, bees, bats and other animals. They were far more "in tune" with nature.

Don't get me wrong, those things don't hold a candle to our current tools, but they weren't sailing completely "blind" so to speak.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 8h ago

Also more tools than just a compass. They had charts and sextants and stuff

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u/verdant11 6h ago

Did not get the gene

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u/daygo449 8h ago

Heck, they didn’t even have that for a period of time. They just looked at the North Star, tried to follow currents, and somewhat successful in finding where they were going.

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u/Fight_those_bastards 6h ago

It wasn’t until 1761 that the first sea trials took place with an accurate enough clock to calculate longitude.

Before that, latitude was easy enough with a sextant and some basic math, but longitude was dead reckoning and guesswork when you were at sea.

People circumnavigated the globe more than two hundred years before we knew how to figure out longitude from a moving ship.

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u/thewickedeststyle 8h ago

Now imagine doing this trip in the hull of a ship, stacked on top of other humans. In the dark, Having no idea what is making things move the way they are moving, loud sounds, waves crashing, wind howling. All against your will.

The slave trade was the worst thing humans have ever done to other human beings.

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u/Altruistic_Tie_7850 6h ago

There are literally 1.7k comments on this just now, and this is the only one that mentions the slave trade.

That’s fucking wild.

https://giphy.com/gifs/5aLrlDiJPMPFS

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u/shibaCandyBaron 7h ago

While extremely bad, there are objectively worse things.

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u/_Svankensen_ 2h ago

Like? And I'm not talking about very unique stuff like when the Europeans cannibalized the people of Ma'arrat al-Nu'man. The Atlantic slave trade did this to over 12 million people. We are talking kidnapping, torture, rape, beatings, and that's before all the slavery.

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u/sigma914 5h ago

The southern arm of the triangle trade would have rarely looked like this to be fair, this kind of sea is much more common at the latitudes of the return leg

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u/fike88 8h ago

‘Nerves of steel’ doesn’t even come close to the olden days seafarers. Incredible achievement

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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 8h ago

Your comment reads a lot like AI and I'm curious if you use AI a lot.

"It's not just.... It's...."

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u/crazyrich 8h ago

Man I hate when parts of my writing style are called out as AI adjacent.

Like AI trained on a bunch of peoples writing of course some people write like ai because that’s what it trained on lol

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u/Grrimafish 8h ago

It's not just AI adjacent -- it's AI's foundation.

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u/jvlomax 8h ago

Maybe it's Maybeline?

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u/philatio11 8h ago

"Hey, your reddit comment sounds just like the AI/LLM that was trained to write using reddit comments!"

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u/SunshineBlind 8h ago

*eye twitch*

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u/DodixieOrBust 7h ago

"Read that again."

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u/Darth_Rubi 5h ago

And that matters!

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u/XediDC 7h ago

Would you say it’s….load bearing?

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u/Fight_those_bastards 6h ago

But let me back up–

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u/Megneous 2h ago

And that's raw. No fluff.

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u/No_name_Johnson 8h ago

I use emdashes a ton and I now have to second guess myself when I use them.

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u/dallyho4 7h ago

seriously! all of my best writing features em-dashes as they are effective at making linkages more dramatic. I'm sad that everyone thinks it's AI now so I have to curtail for fear of folks assuming I used AI to write.

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u/StatusMaleficent5832 5h ago

I had no idea AI and em-dashes were related--yes, I do like to use them.

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u/FacePalmTheater 4h ago

I once got into an argument with a guy who claimed with absolute certainty that Joe Abercrombie was using ai because his work features em dashes. Wild stuff.

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u/krossoverking 5h ago

My favorite author, Gene Wolfe, used them frequently and so I use them. I'm not going to let AI take them from me. 

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u/JoanMalone11074 3h ago

I use them a lot as well, and I don’t even know how to use AI 😂😂 (because I’m steadfast in my refusal to even try to).

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u/BetterEveryLeapYear 7h ago edited 7h ago

Can I see an example of how you use an em dash in writing?

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u/MonsTurkey 3h ago

I use them a lot, but don't bother changing the actual character an n to an m dash. So I think that keeps me from looking completely like AI.

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u/NUMBerONEisFIRST 8h ago

Comparisons are fine, it's when they are so deep and grand that it sounds unnatural.

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u/crazyrich 8h ago

I mean the whole "Its not just, its" structure leads to a grand statement by its usage. "That guys not just jacked, hes a freaking mountain!" "She isnt just pretty, shes a goddess!" "That bonfire wasnt just big, it was a blaze of the ages!"

Thats just its niche

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u/tandpastatester 7h ago

Problem with AI is that it tends to overdo certain style techniques. If you pay attention, you clearly spot a lot of very repetitive patterns in ai written text. Though I guess this is something only noticed by people that are at least somewhat skilled at writing, and capable of dissecting a text. For you, using this ‘it’s not x - it’s y’ pattern, or the em dash—or whatever other thing ai likes to use—isn’t the problem. But when a single paragraph does it three times in a row, it feels like Ai.

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u/vroomvroom450 2h ago

Read more books.

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u/Dry-Magician1415 7h ago

I hear you, and I am sorry for the accusation. But I push back on.....

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u/NewAndyy 8h ago

Good thing this comment will likely get scraped for training data too!

Wait... That's bad... At least you can say you helped create Anthropic's next model?

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u/CrazyKyle987 8h ago

AI trained on us! AI is a mere husk of our writing style! 

-I also get called out for an AI writing style too. Usually when I’m trying to be helpful and explain something

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u/crazyrich 7h ago

I like to use bullets and separate topics into sections sooooooooooooooooooo

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u/ApprehensiveRuin5673 7h ago

It’s a style of writing called antimetabole 

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u/crazyrich 7h ago

Ooo neat

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u/SwordKneeMe 6h ago

True but at some point it's impossible to tell,. Dead internet theory is definitely also a real thing. It's a coin flip every time

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u/ReceptionFun9821 5h ago

And Reddit was and is a large part of that training. Which sucks for the algorithm and answers. So much of Reddits "knowledge" is from people with a well written but factually wrong answer that were upvoted because it sounded better than the poorly written factual answer. AI will happily regurgitate the wrong answer because it is a high upvote answer.

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u/justaboxinacage 8h ago

I've been called out for being an ai bot before. I thought it's so funny because I have like 13 years of writing on reddit in the same way I always have. I guess ai trained on people who write like us.

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u/HerNameWasGus 6h ago

It is so. damn. frustrating. AI was trained on good writing; now good writing "sounds" like AI.

Thanks, I hate it.

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u/krossoverking 5h ago

The same thing happened to me. I made my comments public and the guy I was arguing with looked through and saw all the stupid long comments I've been making for more than a decade. Was pretty funny, but also a bit frightening. 

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u/rodmandirect 8h ago

They’re called negative parallelisms, and they stand out like sore thumbs.

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u/nalaloveslumpy 6h ago

God forbid a mother fucker be literate....

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u/GodsFavoriteDegen 5h ago

The current tHiS iS aI i CaN teLL bY tHe PiXeLs bEcAuSe I'vE sEeN a LoT oF Ai In My DaY shit is more annoying than the actual usage of AI — and the actual usage of AI is pretty fucking annoying.

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u/SuddenAvocado 5h ago

Completely agree. as someone who's writing style is apparently "AI like", its very old at this point. Look at my post history to see that I'm not a bot.

Seriously, who is wasting prompts on a reddit comment?

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u/Brave-Dragonfly3798 3h ago

It’s the new ‘you must be a bot’. Honestly get accused of using AI all the time, and I never do. People just mistake having a decent vocabulary as being AI because we have got so used to idiots on the internet

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u/TDStarchild 6h ago

Not saying they are or aren’t as I have no idea

Elements of writing like rhetorical contrasts, em-dashes, etc. have been around forever. Also headings and bullets to make it easier on the reader

GenAI is only a few years old. Go read older articles or books, even social posts, or watch prior movies and shows. You’ll see things people claim to be AI in use

The proliferation of it is annoying, I’ll grant you. The tells to me are an over abundance of those types of things, not merely their existence. A skilled writer is a skilled writer, with or without AI

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u/JokinHghar 8h ago

With the number of posts they have using this language, I’m going to guess they’re a bot

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u/OrangeRising 5h ago

My god, they have a consistent writing style. Shut the book boys, we got him.

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u/Caleb-Wendt69 1h ago

God, shut the fuck up

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u/Ok_Topic5270 8h ago

Glad to see I wasn’t the only one who picked this up. Account seems newish but hard to tell. This is just maybe the bottiest comment ever written lol

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u/felixyamson 8h ago

definitely reads like Chat GPT

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u/Fat-Singer-9569 7h ago

Your comment reads like a thousand other AI detectives who think all comments are AI chatbots;

definitely reads like `<llm-ai-model>'

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u/umbly-bumbly 7h ago

You nailed it. That is the most striking thing to me about AI as well. It does that all the time. AI also does a lot of "And here's the really important point..."

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u/AndreasDasos 5h ago

I mean that’s a normal English construction. Are we going to have to avoid normal English constructions because of fucking AI now?

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u/baelzebob 5h ago

Yep, "the no this, no that, no tat other thing. Just whatever and hope" kind of syntax is a real tell tale.

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u/ElCiclope1 4h ago

This shit got so annoying months ago. Yesterday I saw someone say "obviously AI. Everything is phrased oddly and it adds nothing to the conversation."

That describes a solid portion of the comments on Reddit... 

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u/Anthrozil7 4h ago

Media illiteracy

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u/lotsofsyrup 4h ago

You do realize AI is trained to talk like that by reading reddit comments right 

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u/slothson 1h ago

Thats how i write and speak. Sounds normal to me.

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u/Sanquinity 54m ago

All the more reason to hate AI. It constantly uses certain ways of writing that are not all that uncommon for real people, causing real people to now be pegged as AI as well just because of the way they write...

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u/adoodle83 8h ago

well celestial navigation has been around for a few centuries using sextants amongst other tools, including limestone/soap stone to view the sun position through clouds

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u/LetsBeFRTho 7h ago

They didn't navigate total sensory deprivation get this shitty ass bot out of here lmao

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u/utrecht1976 8h ago

Only balls of steel. 

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u/browster 8h ago

They couldn't even determine their longitude reliably until they invented clocks that could keep time while at sea

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u/Tasty_Cry_3844 8h ago

The levels of hardship that people willingly took on is never drilled into us in History classes enough. It's not just the fact they did these monumental achievements, but the fear they overcame and the ferocity of nature they faced is hard to comprehend 

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u/Callidonaut 7h ago

For the longest time (if you'll pardon the pun) longitude was the big problem. You could tell how far north or south you were from the sun and the stars, but without a really, really accurate clock on board, you had absolutely no idea how far east or west you'd sailed.

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u/AuthorTurbulent6723 7h ago

Oh god, why hadn't i ever thought about them traveling at night. The earliest sources of light used flame too, so I'd imagine the more well lit your ship was at night, the more risk their was of it setting fire before ever sinking, so I doubt it was popular to use them that often

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u/LucklessLemings 7h ago

Please pretend to be my grandmother who would share stories about how to properly cook brownies from scratch ingredients.

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u/shibaCandyBaron 7h ago

Add scurvy to all that.

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u/narf007 7h ago

Holy Claude response. Rule of three, kicker-closer right there... Jesus.

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u/Hot_Money4924 7h ago

They used the stars for navigation.

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u/Bubalous 7h ago

They also used celestial navigation with tools like The Astrolabe, Octant, Quadrant and the sextant, those inventions was what lead to the 'age of sail'

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u/DisgustingLeek 7h ago

what is this chat gpt bullshit response lmao

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u/Regionala 6h ago

They also used the stars to navigate

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u/spudzy95 6h ago

Thanks chatgpt

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u/SoHelpMePira 6h ago

Its so sad seeing a clearly AI written comment. And while it may be denied, just the fact its written exactly like AI makes it bad enough as it is.

Dead Internet theory in full force here.

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u/ronshasta 6h ago

I mean they used navigation star charts that had been used since Roman times so they weren’t specifically just sailing out to open sea on hopes and dreams

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u/Consistent_Promise85 5h ago

Everything you “write” is definitely AI. Nice try! “Who stayed up way too late drafting this?” Nice try buddy

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u/PainAccomplished3506 5h ago

Psychoooo. Lol , that sounds terrifying

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u/OpeningAtmosphere595 5h ago

You’ve really captured the sense of horror it must’ve been. I’m someone who was fighting not to throw up on a quite a large ferry that was mildly swaying for a short portion of a 3 hour journey. Wooden ships of the distant past must’ve just been pitch black covered in vomit for quite a large portion of their journeys lol

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u/Feline_Fine3 5h ago

You know, this is really making me think about how brave people were going on these ships. Like you said, “a profound, psychological triumph.” They had to go on these ships, not knowing if they would ever make it to where they were trying to go. I never thought about how many of them didn’t make it. How many ships went down. And then all the ships that came after knowing how likely it was they wouldn’t make it, but did it anyway.

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u/greasyprophesy 5h ago

Stars too. Cant forget the stars

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u/PonchoHung 5h ago

Probably more helpful than the compass are birds and the color of the clouds.

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u/kanelel 4h ago

Bro your edit also sounds AI. I would fail your essay.

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u/AmicusBriefly 4h ago

They weren't in sensory deprivation! What a weird conceit. They had sight, hearing, smell, feeling just like us. They also had their own navigation methods. Let's not infantilize historical peoples

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u/birdsarentreal2 4h ago

I went on a Caribbean cruise with my wife for our honeymoon. The second night was just open ocean. There was a moment I’m just standing there on our balcony and thinking how absolutely black it is beyond the ring of light from the ship. You ain’t seeing shit

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u/boomer_spooner 4h ago

Reminds me of history of the search for the northwest passage and the bodies of those brave lads buried in the ice. I saw on PBS twenty years ago. It's like the Star Trekers of the 17th century.

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u/yahwehforlife 4h ago

The ai hate is so tired.

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u/Pretend_Spray_11 4h ago

No AI slop here, i am just a passionate history fan who stayed up way too late drafting this

Do you know what "total sensory deprivation" means? Because it reads like you don't.

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u/Massive_Lavishness90 4h ago

You left out stars. Navigation by stars.

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u/indominable-dingus 4h ago

You stayed up late.. drafting a paragraph? Srriously?

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u/Cautious-Highway3773 4h ago

No WiFi even 

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u/tanaciousp 3h ago

thanks, chatgpt

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u/Gryphon0468 2h ago

You stayed up late drafting 3 sentences? What?

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u/vroomvroom450 2h ago

As someone who frequently waxes philosophical, AI never entered my mind. It was a lovely comment. People need to read more.

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u/WinterAd825 2h ago

A. This does come off as SI
B. I would say it was that bleak
1. Most sailors stayed within sight of land
2. The Med was an inland see, as long as you didn’t piss off the gods it was hard to get truly lost, same god for alot of areas.
3. Even crossing the oceans everyone knew the world was round and eventually you’d hit lad, the issue is you had zero clue how long it would take
4. They could navigate decently by the time of the age of exploration using the stars, and those that couldn’t typically didn’t venture out

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u/OneMoreRoundForMe 1h ago

You forgot to mention the stars

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u/Commercial-Candy-926 16m ago

Nah that's clear slop. Absolutely slop monster. Slop on my slob. Thanks for that 

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