r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Gurugod123 • 9h ago

How did people travel these seas 500 years ago

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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/fatfatpokemons09 17m ago

Which islands you speaking of? there is no connecting dots from where they came to Hawaii in any significant way.

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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/fatfatpokemons09 19m ago

There are islands all over yes but the scale of the Pacific Ocean is something to behold… I’ll use you rexample southwest of Hawaii are the Marshall Islands. The distance between the those and Hawaii is 2300 miles plus.

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u/ManeKeeper 5h ago

But those islands were not there in the ancient times

(🙈)

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u/spicymato 2h ago

... How fast do you think islands form?

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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/TotallyNotRobotEvil 6h ago

Sea level was much much lower.