fronobulax said:
I need to know how to get there and back again since a one way trip is not necessarily of interest, nor is a failure to survive the trip. Perhaps "infrastructure" is standing in for repeatability and familiarity?
That's why they're called "trade routes", like the famous Silk Road, and why prevailing wiinds in various regions of sea trade are called "trade winds". In fact sea trade in may ways was quicker and safer than land trade. According tio Marco polo, the Chinese had extensive sea trade routes all over what are now known as the East Indies and even out to Madagascar. And it's pretty obvious that the only way the southeast Pacific Islands got populated all the way out to Micronesia at all was by fearless seafaring explorers with some pretty extraordinary knowledge of celestial navigation, for "primitive cultures". From there it's not that much farther to Chile.
In counterpoint, as you say, from northern China, it might have been easier to "follow the coastline" all the way around the northern Pacific rim and then back down the coast of Alaska, even when the Bering landbridge was submerged. When you're in the Aleutians you can pretty much see the next island in line if it's not fogged over.
fronobulax said:
I don't consider it too surprising if a North American Native with a dugout full of tobacco got blown out to sea and the dugout (with or without a live passenger) arrived in Africa where a native there tried to burn the leaves and enjoyed it.
Actually I don't think the prevailing currents wouldn't facilitate that, from North America, they tend to travel up from the Carribean, north towards Greenland and then across and south again along the european coast. Why the rum trade went from Africa to the Carribees and then to the early colonies.
fronobulax said:
So that is what I was thinking of and I called it out since I think sea journeys are much more difficult than land ones at presumed levels of low/no technology. For example, because of the Bearing Strait, I would not be at all surprised to find evidence of interaction between the Chinese and the North Americans long before people think it first happened.
At "low" technology levels that may well be true, or it may just depend on how bad the population pressure and threat from "land based" competition (like bandits) is, compared to the risk of going to sea with a pre-packaged food supply in search of new territory. Also very early sea travel was pretty much based on following the coastline, so in some ways it was safer than traveling on land where ambush is more easily accomplished.
As for evidence of contact between Chinese and North America, here's some extremely compelling evidence:
http://www.gavinmenzies.net/Evidence/26 ... nd-belize/
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