ABSTRACT
Ever since the Jesuit Joseph de Acosta first suggested the idea early in the seventeenth century, because it would have enabled the animals from Noah’s Ark to get there dryshod, 1 orthodox opinion has held that the American continent was first peopled via the Bering Strait. Yet paradoxically, though this is assumed to have been a land route at the relevant period, of all the continents America has the richest range of surviving prehistoric craft. In addition to vast size, great variations in ecological conditions, and isolation, it was not until the arrival of the Spaniards in the sixteenth century that this continent felt the impact of the complicated development of European shipping. We have therefore had preserved for us, at least until recent times, an extraordinary range of aboriginal craft. This is of great importance to the nautical archaeologist because, while few would argue that exact parallels exist everywhere, we can see many of the solutions achieved by primitive peoples in different conditions and study some of the processes that in the old world are much more difficult to perceive under their elaborate layers of later events.
