What was it going to do to be settled in islands never united by land, without reliable boats, ropes and a plan to go back?
Forces of Island Southeast Asia that doubts since much of it is out of the reach of ancient land bridges. However, in the archaeological sites in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste there are remnants of immense ancientness: people lived, went and took food in a land constructed of the channels, straits, and open water. The difficulty is that the most useful evidence are the hulls of the wood, and the lashings of the plants, and woven nets, which hardly ever remain in a tropical climate. The enduring substitutes, the edges of stone, the cusps of fish, the hook, and the net weight, are all that is left. Collectively, the fragments are being read today as a technological system and not as scattered curiosities.
Studies on Pleistocene Wallacea concentrated on using microscopic analysis of stone tools to determine definite indicator of plant processing in line with fibre extraction. That is important since fiber is the silent seafaring material of engineering: rope to haul, straps to hold components, netting to catch, and ropes to deep-water fishing. These instruments themselves do not say “boatbuilding,” but the marks of the wear suggest repetition of the action-scraping, stripping, splitting, twisting-and convert soft vegetable material into ropes and nets that can bear the strain. That is to say that the record of the archaeological system is the record of a blueprint in negative, and the absent object is deduced out of the labour required to create it.
The same sites expand the scenario of manufacturing to use. Pelagic species, including tuna and sharks, occur in the deposits where they cannot have been caught otherwise than through reef fishing. The authors of the study gave the conclusion in one line that doubles up as a design brief: “The remains of large predatory pelagic fish at these sites indicate the capacity for advanced seafaring and knowledge of the seasonality and migration routes of those fish species.” The process of catching open-ocean fish in short fuses over and over again, cannot be left to chance, but to timing, equipment capable of supporting weight and survival in water, and ship that is sea-worthy enough to operate outside of protected coastlines.
One of the most tangible fishing technology is seen in Jerimalai rock shelter in Timor-Leste. The shell fish hooks there dated about 23,000-16,000 years old, and a very ancient history of the remains of pelagic fish. Hooks, gorges and net weights even in the absence of boats themselves can be used to draw the operational side of marine life: specialized procedures, routines, and equipment which are directly the beneficiaries of well-known cordage. There is no rope involved in that system, it is part of the system that acts as a connector between toolmaking, boat maintenance, and fishing success.
A single short paragraph may contain a giant result: had there been the institution of cordage and open-water fishing here many tens of thousands of years before, the country was not a technological backwater.
This is also a change in the vision of migrations. An ancient conception made early crossings incidentsal: men floated away, in weak rafts, and therefore were deposited upon new shores by the forces of the current. The evidence that has been building up has been that this was more of a deliberate act: there were skilled sailors who made use of composite technologies, which incorporated fiber extractions, binding and fastening techniques, their fishing apparatus that were calibrated to offshore species. The research program has even progressed to experimental tests with a project initiated the First Long-Distance Open-Sea Watercrafts (FLOW) Project to test probable raw materials and sizable-scaled versions.
In Island southeast Asia, stone tools and fish bones are taking over the job of the dead boats. They demonstrate not only locomotion of the water, but of thread to rope, rope to boat seams and fishing line, lines to pelagic catch, that the chain of making and doing implies engineering knowledge enshrined in everyday life. In that chain, the sea does not represent a barrier traversed by chance; it is a form of work created by design, craft, and trained professionalism.
