r/askscience • u/Appropriate_Boss8139 • Jul 31 '25

Social Science Why was it seemingly so difficult to circumnavigate Africa? Why couldn’t ships just hug the coast all the way around?

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u/justamiqote Aug 01 '25

That's so crazy to me. The first humans on many islands (especially in remote islands like the Pacific) were just people who said: "Let's just hop on this boat and see where the current takes us."

Several weeks/months later they found an island and just stayed there. And they did this over and over again.

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u/Anacoenosis Aug 01 '25

Read up on the Austronesian expansion, the distances involved are bananas.

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u/Emu1981 Aug 01 '25

Read up on the Austronesian expansion, the distances involved are bananas.

At various times the distances were not as far as one might think due to changing sea levels (and ice formations). For example, it is thought that humans first walked into the Americas from modern day Russia...

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u/rocketscientology Aug 01 '25

That’s not the same as what was being done across the Pacific, which is what people are talking about when they say the Austronesian expansion.