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The Global Origins and Development of Seafaring

This volume offers a global and thorough approach to the subject of prehistoric seafaring and related factors and contexts. As Atholl Anderson points out so clearly in the introductory chapter, this type of approach is necessary owing to the global significance of seafaring both in prehistoric times and in human history in general. Any study of the subject must therefore be multidisciplinary, highlighting the relationship between archaeological and paleoenvironmental, ethnographic, anthropological, and linguistic evidence while also considering the results from experimental studies, whether virtual (computer simulations) or practical (boat replicas and navigation). Indeed, this publication meets the requirements of this modern methodological approach perfectly. It goes beyond the scope of this review to comment on each individual contribution, all of which are of outstanding quality. Instead, we shall limit ourselves to highlighting the overall characteristics of the work, focusing in particular on those aspects that are clearly pertinent to navigation. Geographically, the volume covers almost the entire planet: Australia, the archipelagos of the Pacific, the Japanese archipelago, the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, northern Europe (the North Sea and the Baltic), the Atlantic, and the Americas. All chronological stages have been taken into consideration, starting with the first, hypothetical forms of Pleistocene ‘proto-navigation’ (coastal travel and short crossings), which were either occasional or even unintentional, and probably related to the exploitation of the sea resources along the coasts. In this regard, the volume highlights how the earliest testimonies of the exploitation of sea resources do not necessarily imply some form of organized, voluntary navigation. A fundamental reference point of the studies is the settlement of Sahul, in other words the passage from South East Asia to Great Australia, the chronology of which lies, according to hypotheses and various dating methods, between 60,000 and 40,000 BP. One cannot exclude that this was a case of voluntary and intentional migration. Paleoenvironmental analysis plays a fundamental role in studies of prehistoric navigation, with specific reference to the phenomena of the fall in sea levels during glaciations, which reduced the sea levels by as much as 120 m compared to today's sea level. Today, many sea sectors in which there are now archipelagos were then above sea level, creating connections with the mainland that no longer exist or, making the continents closer to the islands and therefore making crossings easier (in addition to the example of Sunda and Sahul, also worthy of mention is the Japanese archipelago, the first human settlement of which goes back to 35,000– 30,000 BP, and that of the Bering Straits, between Siberia and Alaska, which were first crossed by humans before 15,000 BP and perhaps even around 30,000 BP). The human population of these islands, which were never completely connected to the continent by land above sea level, is a