Early human marine exploration of North America and their vessels

Pericles 1200tons, unmoved, what is the largest recorded stone moved ? Why all that manpower to carve that massive size if they knew( they would have known) it couldn't be moved. Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. Maybe it was a more efficient method of creating matched blocks by allowing more workers side by side in one location to water,feed, and carve following a common long line etched in one piece of rock. When they comleted as far as their dimensions would allow in the raw rock they simply cut it in managable transections. Also maybe this was the riddle in the stone you wanted solved. The How ?--Geo

 

George,

It's an old adage in criminal law that a barrister should never ask a question of a witness, to which he does not already know the answer. So it is with my questions here at the forum about moving obelisks etc.

Here are links to Wally Wallington. He uses two fulcrums to raise monolithic concrete blocks by simply rolling square counterweights from one end to another and up it goes. It really is a clever solution.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCvx5gSnfW4

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wally_Wallington

http://www.theforgottentechnology.com/

If, OTOH, anyone knows of a better way, let's see it as I am always open minded.

 

Interesting approaches, we often look for the complicated while the simple answer is right in front of us. I've seen a few of these demos and we have to remember that the anchients developed their methods over thousands of years based on the truth that necessity is the mother of invention. The successful trip to the moon was input from many nations over thousands of years. Initally Chinese fireworks the next big jump British and German rocket research and finally the spoils of war( Nazi scientists) then a big plus a discontinued Canadian superadvanced jet fighter(Avro Arrow more advanced rocket scientists) and finally U.S. spirit and money.
Ok getting off the rock subject and to boats as you suggested, Were the Arab Dows the first known widely used fore and aft rigged vessels.(lateen rigs) Compared to the standard European rigs(square) The lateen sail was far advanced in the ability to work to windward and there was really no reason why the rig shouldn't have been adopted long before it was. It always puzzeled me in the slow acceptance other than maybe trade wind discoverys kept the old square rigs in vogue. The addition of jibs and spankers was some change but it was late in the golden age of sail before total acceptance and even then the old windjammers held on.--Geo.

 

The Knights Hospitaller or Knights of Malta, used galleys with lateen rigs, which they adapted from the Dhow. See the model link.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Nf5FfHNth64/StZZaRphXlI/AAAAAAAAHW8/Cd3MP0Yd-fI/s1600-h/Galley.jpg

Such craft were designed for the Mediterranean. These battles were fought mainly without sails aloft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto

The size, weight & length of the spars are the limiting factors I would think, especially for global navigation. Columbus sailed to the New World with a carrack & two caravels, but some re-rigging is believed to have taken place during the voyage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niña

Even earlier than that, Roman cargo vessels carried a spar on a type of bowsprit cum foremast. It was a very useful addition, but it dropped out of use for many centuries.

http://www.modelshipmaster.com/products/ancient/roman merchantman.htm

Niña seemed to have carried one. "She was originally lateen sail rigged Caravela Latina, but she was re-rigged as Caravela Redonda in the Azores with square sails for better ocean performance."

Considering the large numbers of different rigs during the age of sail, Shipwrights weren't adverse from learning from other seafaring nations.

http://www.modelismonaval.com/magazine/sumario/index.html

 

It would seem oceanic trade winds did play a big role in the the rig choice but boy it did hamper manoveriability once they closed in on a coast. Many a good vessel was lost due to that unexpected puff of wind from the wrong direction as a result of downdrafts or around small islands. Drakes Channel being possibly the biggest challenge dealing with this phenomenon. I am always intrigued on how people like Cook mananged to chart in that it was all coastal work. Anchors, longboats,luck and lots of patience was the rule of the day. The other aspect of these old vessels it seems they all leaked to some degree or other usually as a rule other, meaning gallons per hour verses per day. This was probably a good feature in that it kept the bilges washed out to some extent. You mentioned mast sizes played a big role. never thought of that and indeed it would as some of these ships were huge and the engineering used in adding mast sections to get the overall height needed was a feat in itself. In orded for a fore and aft rig to operate to it's full potential it would have required a cleaner one piece set up and if that piece of wood was storm damaged or shot away access to another would not be easy. The shorter length matrix pieces could be carried as spares or cut in the local forests of the crusing grounds. As a point of interest the British had certain highly protected forest areas thruout their Empire listed as Crown Spar forests and only authorized cutting was allowed. My home then colony of Newfoundland had several such areas of virgin forested huge spruce trees where two men couldn't get their arms around them. Bowaters has since ***** these away for the paper industry, good news paper mills are closing out new forests growing like mad and maybe this time the trees will be properly harvested for a more economical gain. A piece of historic info, Newfoundland was the first piece of overseas landmass acquired in what would become the British Empire.--- Geo.

P.S. note how the post is taking it's next turn

 

WOW!

An invasion from Space of Midget Races!



"A doctor in Ecuador notices his shortest patients are some of his healthiest. Evidence is mounting that a brown dwarf star or a gas giant planet is part of our solar system."




http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/02/18/week.review/index.html?hpt=C1

Its 27 million-year orbit could also explain a pattern of mass extinctions on Earth, scientists say.




Scientists, telescope hunt massive hidden object in space

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/02/15/scientists-telescope-hunt-massive-hidden-object-in-space/

 

Ya, its too bad that French king did them in.

 

A lot of interesting stuff here.

It doesn't occur to some folks that while our ancestors might not have had the centuries (or millennia) of technological advances to build upon that we have, it doesn't mean they were any less intelligent than we are -- or any less skilled at using what was available to them..

And less advanced technology isn't necessarily simpler technology. A full-rigged sailing ship from a couple of centuries ago might have five miles of rigging, and 20,000 square feet of sail available....

 

some WicketGood me son, why didn't you post this last spring, i would have worked on my build instead of taking on another big house reno project. With this coming i might not have time to complete my project. Just when the comforth level time of a build is all in place some dam Murphys Law shows up Interesting, maybe our earliest, earliest visitors are returning and all we can hope for is that they are those little people, then we can sell smaller crusing boats for a bigger price. Geo.

 

Troy so true, not only more gear to tend to but they had to work out in the open weather. I can't emagine what it was like to round the Horn in winter as those old clipper boys used to do. Passingers out to, and California cattle hides, Otter, seal,fur and walrus ivory on the return. California and Alaska had the biggest Otter and Seal fur industries in the world. Hunted to the point of extinctsion and if their population explosion continues it might become so again. In the early 1900's my ancestors would load up their schooners in nov. with christmas trees sail down to Boston and New York, tie up at the wharf, sell them then sail back home in time for Christmas.Dec., dam it must have been cold. Geo.

 

Hoytedow,

Perhaps you are thinking of Philip IV of France who was deeply in debt to the Knights Templar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_Templar

The Knights of Malta still exist.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knights_of_malta

viking north,

Your point about how threads evolve is well made. We can contemplate sheltering under skin boats whilst moving west along the North Atlantic ice edge during the Last Glacial Maximum as the suggested route the Solutreans may have taken to N. America.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2002/columbus.shtml

 

Pericles, you are right. I was thinking of the Knights Templar. Sorry for the inaccuracy.

 

Pericles: Academics keep on telling us roughnecks how the things we routinely do at work can't possibly be done. I'm glad Orville and Wilbur were bicycle mechanics and not physicists.

 

Pericles, It's just a hunch but I still have that erry feeling that if I could contact the right open minded people and have them compare the Beothuck DNA with that of the solutreans there will be a definate connection. In this case there are two opportunities, One with the Spanish scientists studying the Viking Native connection in which they are struggling to make a more direct tie in and second the tie in between the Beothuck and the solutrean inital trans atlantic migrations.The distance in this case would be less than today as the Grand Banks were up to 300ft. above sea level and some reports indicate they were ice free and were covered in forest being closer to what was then a much diminished gulf stream but never the less it still existed. So if we account for the european contenital shelf also being above sea level in places the distance would have been possibly less than 1000miles of travel. A reduction of 1/3 compared to today. No big deal for people experienced in artic travel. Our northern native people have done this on dog teams so there is no reason why a similar or many similar trips couldn't have been done in the past. Their skin boats being so light could have been placed upright on a sled filled with supplies. emptied and flipped for shelter at night or during storms, used to fish and hunt on the water in route. Wirh such a system even modern man could cover this distance using that old technology. That last site you posted was great, thanks. Geo.

 

answers?

Here in southern New England, there are two possible Viking sites. The Viking tower in Newport Rhode Island has supossedly been declared as early colonial although many still dispute that. In the Taunton River there is Dighton Rock that has markings that look like runes but have not been deciphered and are questioned. They may be glacial styrations, but are different enough to make that doubtful also. No answers, just questions. There is also the discovery of Viling era coins in mound site in the mid west. My vote says they were at least as far south as new england. Think of how little time it would have taken to sail fron Newfoundland to Cape Cod--- maybe 3 or 4 days with good weather. If we know anything about the vikings it is that they were seafarers and adventurers who went whereever their whims and water could take them. I'm prone to want to believe this owing to being about 1/2
norweigan by ancestory.