The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  6. S. Sörlin, ‘The Arctic Ocean’, and A. Antonello, ‘The Southern Ocean’, in Armitage et al., Oceanic Histories, pp. 269–318.

  7. C. Roberts, Ocean of Life: How Our Seas are Changing (London, 2012), and his earlier The Unnatural History of the Sea: the Past and Future of Humanity and Fishing (London, 2007); for the origins of the oceans see D. Stow, Vanished Ocean: How Tethys Reshaped the World (Oxford, 2010); J. Zalasiewicz and M. Williams, Ocean Worlds: the Story of Seas on Earth and Other Planets (Oxford, 2014); H. Rozwadowski, Vast Expanses: a History of the Oceans (London, 2018).

  8. A. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: the Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (Cambridge, 1986); A. Watson, Agricultural Innovation in the Early Islamic World: the Diffusion of Crops and Farming Techniques, 700–1100 (Cambridge, 1983).

  9. D. Abulafia, ‘Mediterraneans’, in W. Harris, Rethinking the Mediterranean (Oxford, 2005), pp. 64–93.

  10. D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven, 2008).

  11. D. Abulafia, ‘Asia, Africa and the Trade of Medieval Europe’, in M. M. Postan, E. Miller and C. Postan, eds., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1987), vol. 2, pp. 402–73.

  PART ONE

  THE OLDEST OCEAN: THE PACIFIC, 176,000 BC–AD 1350

  1. The Oldest Ocean

  1. Cited from Cook’s journals by K. R. Howe, The Quest for Origins: Who First Discovered and Settled the Pacific Islands? (Auckland and Honolulu, 2003), p. 33.

  2. P. V. Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: an Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000), p. 93; B. Finney, ‘Ocean Sailing Canoes’, in K. R. Howe, ed., Vaka Moana – Voyages of the Ancestors: the Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific (Auckland, 2006), p. 109. See now C. Thompson, Sea Peoples: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific (London, 2019) for rich new perspectives.

  3. Kirch, Road of the Winds, p. 91, citing the work of P. Bellwood.

  4. Kirch, Road of the Winds, pp. 44–50.

  5. G. Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (Cambridge, 1992), p. 19.

  6. G. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, in Howe, ed., Vaka Moana, p. 59; M. Morwood and P. van Osterzee, A New Human: the Startling Discovery and Strange Story of the ‘Hobbits’ of Flores (Washington DC, 2007).

  7. Howe, Quest for Origins, pp. 64–5.

  8. C. Clarkson and twenty-eight other authors, ‘Human Occupation of Northern Australia by 65,000 Years Ago’, Nature, vol. 547 (20 July 2017), pp. 306–26.

  9. S. O’Connor and P. Veth, ‘The World’s First Mariners: Savannah Dwellers in an Island Continent’, in S. O’Connor and P. Veth, eds., East of Wallace’s Line: Studies of Past and Present Maritime Cultures of the Indo-Pacific Region (Rotterdam, 2000), pp. 99–137; Kirch, Road of the Winds, pp. 67–8.

  10. Finney, ‘Ocean Sailing Canoes’, pp. 106–7.

  11. Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation, p. 27; B. Fagan, Beyond the Blue Horizon: How the Earliest Mariners Unlocked the Secrets of the Oceans (New York, 2012), pp. 17–30.

  12. O’Connor and Veth, ‘World’s First Mariners’, pp. 100, 114, 130.

  13. N. Sharp, Saltwater People: the Waves of Memory (Toronto, 2002), p. 77; A. Barham, ‘Late Holocene Maritime Societies in the Torres Strait Islands, Northern Australia – Cultural Arrival or Cultural Emergence?’, in O’Connor and Veth, eds., East of Wallace’s Line, pp. 223–314.

  14. Barham, ‘Late Holocene Maritime Societies’, pp. 230, 233.

  15. A. Clarke, ‘The “Moorman’s Trowsers”: Macassan and Aboriginal Interactions and the Changing Fabric of Indigenous Social Life’, in O’Connor and Veth, eds., East of Wallace’s Line, pp. 315–35.

  16. Barham, ‘Late Holocene Maritime Societies’, pp. 228, 234; Sharp, Saltwater People, pp. 74–5, 78, 80.

  17. Barham, ‘Late Holocene Maritime Societies’, p. 248, fig. 5.

  18. Sharp, Saltwater People, p. 25.

  19. Fagan, Beyond the Blue Horizon, pp. 22–3; Sharp, Saltwater People, pp. 71, 78–9.

  20. Sharp, Saltwater People, p. 84.

  21. D. Roe, ‘Maritime, Coastal and Inland Societies in Island Melanesia: the Bush–Saltwater Divide in Solomon Islands and Vanuatu’, in O’Connor and Veth, eds., East of Wallace’s Line, pp. 197–222.

  22. J. Allen, ‘From Beach to Beach: the Development of Maritime Economies in Prehistoric Melanesia’, in O’Connor and Veth, eds., East of Wallace’s Line, pp. 139–76; Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation, p. 19.

  23. Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation, p. 29.

  24. Ibid., p. 53.

  25. Finney, ‘Ocean Sailing Canoes’, p. 133; A. A. Perminow et al., Stjernestier over Stillehavet – Starpaths across the Pacific (Oslo, 2008), pp. 54–6.

  26. Kirch, Road of the Winds, p. 111.

  27. A. Couper, Sailors and Traders: a Maritime History of the Pacific Peoples (Honolulu, 2009), p. 24; see also P. Rainbird, The Archaeology of Micronesia (Cambridge, 2004).

  28. Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation, p. 37.

  29. Howe, Quest for Origins, p. 79; Kirch, Road of the Winds, pp. 109–10.

  30. D. Lewis, We, the Navigators: the Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific, 2nd edn (Honolulu, 1994), pp. 297–303; on whom see Thompson, Sea Peoples, pp. 262–73.

  31. Lewis, We, the Navigators, pp. 303–4.

  32. Kirch, Road of the Winds, p. 98.

  33. Ibid., pp. 97, 106–7, 111; Howe, Quest for Origins, p. 75.

  34. Kirch, Road of the Winds, pp. 101–6.

  35. B. Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London, 1922); M. K. Matsuda, Pacific Worlds: a History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (Cambridge, 2012), p. 16.

  36. Kirch, Road of the Winds, p. 113.

  37. Illustrations from across Oceania in Finney, ‘Ocean Sailing Canoes’, pp. 110–17, drawing on A. Haddon and J. Hornell, Canoes of Oceania (3 vols., Honolulu, 1936–9).

  38. B. Finney and S. Low, ‘Navigation’, in Howe, ed., Vaka Moana, p. 165; also Lewis, We, the Navigators, pp. 139–91.

  39. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, p. 73.

  40. Finney and Low, ‘Navigation’, pp. 170–71; J. Evans, Polynesian Navigation and the Discovery of New Zealand (Auckland, 2011; rev. edn of The Discovery of Aotearoa, Auckland, 1998), pp. 55–8.

  41. Lewis, We, the Navigators, pp. 102–11.

  42. D. Lewis, The Voyaging Stars: Secrets of the Pacific Island Navigators (Sydney, 1978), p. 19.

  43. Cited in Finney and Low, ‘Navigation’, p. 174.

  44. Finney and Low, ‘Navigation’, pp. 172, 178–9.

  45. Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation, pp. 46–7; Howe, Quest for Origins, pp. 104–5.

  46. Lewis, We, the Navigators, pp. 173–91; Finney and Low, ‘Navigation’, pp. 166–8; Howe, Quest for Origins, p. 103.

  47. A. Sharp, Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific (Harmondsworth, 1956), on which see Thompson, Sea Peoples, pp. 250–61.

  48. Kirch, Road of the Winds, p. 96.

  49. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, p. 76.

  2. Songs of the Navigators

  1. G. Irwin, The Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation of the Pacific (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 73–4, discussing the view that the interval is an illusion.

  2. P. V. Kirch, On the Road of the Winds: an Archaeological History of the Pacific Islands before European Contact (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2000), p. 232.

  3. Irwin, Prehistoric Exploration and Colonisation, pp. 103–4.

  4. Cf. A. Sharp, Ancient Voyagers in the Pacific (Harmondsworth, 1956), p. 164.

  5. Kirch, Road of the Winds, pp. 283–4; A. A. Perminow, Stjenestier over Stillehavet – Starpaths across the Pacific (Oslo, 2008), p. 91.

  6. Perminow, Stjenestier over Stillehavet, pp. 83, 88–90; Kirch, Road of the Winds, p. 288; D. Lewis, We, the Navigators: the Ancient Art of Landfinding in the Pacific (2nd e
dn, Honolulu, 1994), p. 13.

  7. P. V. Kirch, A Shark Going Inland is My Chief: the Island Civilization of Ancient Hawai’i (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2012), p. 17.

  8. P. V. Kirch, How Chiefs Became Kings: Divine Kingship and the Rise of Archaic States in Ancient Hawai’i (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2010).

  9. Kirch, Shark Going Inland, pp. 108–9.

  10. Cited by Kirch, Shark Going Inland, p. 122.

  11. Kirch, How Chiefs Became Kings, pp. 84–6.

  12. Kirch, Shark Going Inland, pp. 126–30.

  13. Kirch, Road of the Winds, pp. 290–93.

  14. Ibid., pp. 289–300, drawing on M. Sahlins, Islands of History (Chicago, 1985), and P. Kirch and M. Sahlins, Anabulu: the Anthropology of History in the Kingdom of Hawaii (2 vols., Chicago, 1992).

  15. J. Flenley and P. Bahn, The Enigmas of Easter Island (2nd edn, Oxford, 2003), p. 35; C. Thompson, Sea Peoples: In Search of the Ancient Navigators of the Pacific (London, 2019).

  16. G. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, in K. R. Howe, ed., Vaka Moana – Voyages of the Ancestors: the Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific (Auckland, 2006), p. 83.

  17. L. Gamble, The Chumash World at European Contact: Power, Trade, and Feasting among Complex Hunter-Gatherers (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2008); B. Miller, Chumash: a Picture of Their World (Los Osos, 1988).

  18. C. Lazcano Sahagún, Pa-Tai: la Historia olvidada de Ensenada (Ensenada, 2000), pp. 73–7.

  19. T. Heyerdahl and A. Skjølsvold, Archeological Evidence of Pre-Spanish Visits to the Galápagos Islands (Oslo, 1990; originally published in American Antiquity, vol. 22 (1956), no. 2, part 3).

  20. Flenley and Bahn, Enigmas of Easter Island, p. 34.

  21. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, p. 85.

  22. Flenley and Bahn, Enigmas of Easter Island, p. 40.

  23. Lewis, We, the Navigators, p. 353; Sharp, Ancient Voyagers, pp. 153–5.

  24. Flenley and Bahn, Enigmas of Easter Island, pp. 54–5, 75–7, 184–5.

  25. Ibid., p. 68.

  26. A. Di Piazza and E. Pearthree, ‘A New Reading of Tupaia’s Chart’, Journal of the Polynesian Society, vol. 116 (2007), pp. 321–40; Thompson, Sea Peoples, pp. 88–98.

  27. Sharp, Ancient Voyagers, pp. 149, 156–7.

  28. D. R. Simmons, The Great New Zealand Myth: a Study of the Discovery and Origin Traditions of the Maori (Wellington, 1976), p. 57; Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck), The Coming of the Maori (Wellington, 1950), p. 5.

  29. J. C. Beaglehole, The Discovery of New Zealand (2nd edn, Wellington, 1961), pp. 1–8.

  30. R. Taonui, ‘Polynesian Oral Traditions’, in Howe, ed., Vaka Moana, pp. 35–6.

  31. Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth, pp. 7, 22.

  32. P. V. Kirch and R. C. Green, Hawaiki, Ancestral Polynesia: an Essay in Historical Anthropology (Cambridge, 2001).

  33. Taonui, ‘Polynesian Oral Traditions’, pp. 49, 52.

  34. Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 15, 29, 36–7.

  35. Ibid., p. 7.

  36. Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth, pp. 341–53; Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 5–6; J. Evans, Polynesian Navigation and the Discovery of New Zealand (Auckland, 2011; rev. edn of The Discovery of Aotearoa, Auckland, 1998), pp. 33–7.

  37. Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 10–11.

  38. Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth, pp. 23, 341–2.

  39. Text ibid., pp. 342–7; also pp. 71–3, 100.

  40. Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, p. 23.

  41. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, p. 91.

  42. Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth, pp. 344–5; Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 24–5.

  43. Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 33–4.

  44. Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth, pp. 345–6; Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 26–7.

  45. Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, p. 43.

  46. Ibid., pp. 51, 64; Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, pp. 89–90.

  47. Simmons, Great New Zealand Myth, pp. 347–50.

  48. Irwin, ‘Voyaging and Settlement’, p. 90.

  49. D. Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction (London, 1996), pp. 193–4; Hiroa, Coming of the Maori, pp. 19–21.

  PART TWO

  THE MIDDLE OCEAN: THE INDIAN OCEAN AND ITS NEIGHBOURS

  3. The Waters of Paradise

  1. J. Stanley-Baker, Japanese Art (London, 1984), pp. 47–9, and fig. 33.

  2. M. Pearson, The Indian Ocean (London, 2003), p. 13; H. P. Ray, The Archaeology of Seafaring in the Indian Ocean (Cambridge, 2003), and other works by this prolific author.

  3. P. Beaujard, Les Mondes de l’Océan Indien, vol. 1: De la formation de l’État au premier système-monde afro-eurasien (4e millénaire av. J.-C.–6e siècle ap. J.-C.) (Paris, 2012), p. 32; Pearson, Indian Ocean, p. 14.

  4. Sultan Dr Muhammad bin Muhammad al-Qasimi, The Gulf in Historic Maps 1478–1861 (Sharjah, UAE, 1999).

  5. K. N. Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean: an Economic History from the Rise of Islam to 1750 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 25, 27.

  6. Beaujard, Mondes, vol. 1, pp. 32–5; Pearson, Indian Ocean, p. 21; Chaudhuri, Trade and Civilisation, pp. 22, 24, maps 2 and 3; Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring, pp. 20–22, figs. 1.1 and 1.2.

  7. H. Crawford, Dilmun and Its Gulf Neighbours (Cambridge, 1998), p. 8.

  8. D. T. Potts, The Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1: From Prehistory to the Fall of the Achaemenid Empire (Oxford, 1990), p. 41; Crawford, Dilmun, p. 14.

  9. Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, pp. 56, 59–61.

  10. M. Roaf and J. Galbraith, ‘Pottery and P-Values: “Seafaring Merchants of Ur” Re-Examined’, Antiquity, vol. 68 (1994), no. 261, pp. 770–83; Crawford, Dilmun, pp. 24, 27.

  11. D. K. Chakrabarti, The External Trade of the Indus Civilization (New Delhi, 1990), pp. 31–7, 141.

  12. J. Connan, R. Carter, H. Crawford, et al., ‘A Comparative Geochemical Study of Bituminous Boat Remains from H3, As-Sabiyah (Kuwait), and RJ-2, Ra’s al-Jinz (Oman)’, Arabian Archaeology and Epigraphy, vol. 16 (2005), pp. 21–66.

  13. Beaujard, Mondes, vol. 1, pp. 67–8, 226.

  14. Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, p. 44.

  15. Crawford, Dilmun, pp. 21, 27, 30.

  16. S. Lloyd, Foundations in the Dust: a Story of Mesopotamian Exploration (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1955), pp. 177–9.

  17. A. George, The Epic of Gilgamesh: the Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian (London, 1999), pp. 198–9; S. N. Kramer, ‘Dilmun: Quest for Paradise’, Antiquity, vol. 37 (1963), no. 146, p. 111.

  18. Beaujard, Mondes, vol. 1, pp. 127, 132–3.

  19. Geoffrey Bibby, Looking for Dilmun (London and New York, 1970; new edns 1996, 2012), pp. 79–81.

  20. Cf. M. Rice, The Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf c.5000–323 BC (London, 1994), p. 135, understanding ‘house of the quay’ as a Dilmun temple.

  21. Kramer, ‘Dilmun’, pp. 112–13.

  22. W. F. Leemans, Foreign Trade in the Old Babylonian Period as Revealed by Texts from Southern Mesopotamia (Leiden, 1960), pp. 9–11; also cited by Rice in his often unreliable Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf, p. 108.

  23. Slightly amended from the text cited by Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, p. 143.

  24. Crawford, Dilmun, p. 104; Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, pp. 90, 113–25, especially fig. 15, p. 120.

  25. Leemans, Foreign Trade, pp. 19–21; cf. Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, p. 183.

  26. Crawford, Dilmun, pp. 104–24.

  27. Leemans, Foreign Trade, pp. 26, 29, 31, 33.

  28. Leemans, Foreign Trade, p. 36, doc. 14, with some alterations.

  29. Cf. Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, taking the view he was of only moderate wealth.

  30. Leemans, Foreign Trade, pp. 39–40, doc. 17, slightly amended; also pp. 51–2.

  31. Rice, Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf, pp. 276–80.

  32. Crawford, Dilmun, p. 41.

  33. M
y special thanks to the American University of Sharjah for facilitating my visit to this and other sites and museums.

  34. Crawford, Dilmun, pp. 150–51; also Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, pp. 143, 149.

  35. Chakrabarti, External Trade, pp. 145, 149; Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, p. 167.

  36. Leemans, Foreign Trade, pp. 159–66; Chakrabarti, External Trade, pp. 145–50, citing at length various views.

  37. G. Hourani, Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times, revised by J. Carswell (2nd edn, Princeton, 1995), pp. 129–30.

  38. Rice, Archaeology of the Arabian Gulf, p. 271.

  39. Excellent maps and an up-to-date survey in J. McIntosh, The Ancient Indus Valley: New Perspectives (Santa Barbara, 2008); Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring, p. 92, fig. 4.3; also S. Piggott, Prehistoric India to 1000 BC (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1952), p. 137, fig. 17.

  40. L. N. Swamy, Maritime Contacts of Ancient India with Special Reference to the West Coast (New Delhi, 2000), pp. 21, 26; Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring, pp. 95–6; Leemans, Foreign Trade, p. 162, citing the views of Sir Mortimer Wheeler, excavator of the Indus sites.

  41. Piggott, Prehistoric India, p. 138; also Beaujard, Mondes, vol. 1, p. 113.

  42. Chakrabarti, External Trade, pp. 45–7; Piggott, Prehistoric India, pp. 208–9.

  43. Chakrabarti, External Trade, pp. 47, 53–61, 139, 143; Swamy, Maritime Contacts, pp. 23–5.

  44. Piggott, Prehistoric India, pp. 183–4.

  45. Chakrabarti, External Trade, pp. 22–7, 29–30; Swamy, Maritime Contacts, p. 22.

  46. Crawford, Dilmun, p. 150.

  47. Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, p. 18.

  48. Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, pp. 333–4; Ray, Archaeology of Seafaring, p. 105; Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, pp. 31, 45.

  49. Crawford, Dilmun, p. 51; Bibby, Looking for Dilmun, p. 47; image of inscription: p. 49.

  50. Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, pp. 88–9; cf. Kramer, ‘Dilmun’, pp. 111–15, recommending India.

  51. Crawford, Dilmun, pp. 71–9; Potts, Arabian Gulf in Antiquity, vol. 1, pp. 168–72.