86 : The Atlantic 



early Irish travelers made extensive and successful voyages in such 

 skin boats. It is generally believed that it was in vessels o£ this type 

 that the Irish reached Iceland and were reported there by early voy- 

 agers from Scandinavia. A small vessel made up of such hides 

 stretched over a wooden frame is still in use by the fishermen of the 

 Isle of Arran (Scotch southwest coast) and is believed to be a small 

 and late survivor of the curragh type of construction. 



From another part of the world comes the history of extremely 

 long voyages in the open ocean made by people who had no knowl- 

 edge of the use of metals and who employed what is commonly re- 

 garded as a primitive method of transportation. These people are the 

 Polynesians and their vessel is the outrigger sailing canoe. Dr. Peter 

 Buck, from New Zealand and partly of Polynesian ancestry, after 

 many years of study first at the University of Hawaii and later at 

 Yale University succeeded in working out an extensive and con- 

 nected chronological account of the voyages and migrations of the 

 Polynesian people over vast areas in the Pacific Ocean. They success- 

 fully completed such passages as those from Tahiti to Samoa, Tahiti 

 to Hawaii and also from the central Polynesian groups to New Zea- 

 land. 



Of course the Polynesian voyages are not an integral part of Atlan- 

 tic history but indirectly they have an important bearing on our story. 

 The Polynesians, though highly developed in literature and philoso- 

 phy, are technicologically a Stone Age people surviving into modern 

 times. They made their great voyages before they had any knowl- 

 edge of metals or contact with Europeans and their inventions. Close 

 study of all branches of the Polynesian people has recently made it 

 possible to establish a chronology for their migrations and to docu- 

 ment the story of their migrations. Thus it has been established that 

 people with relatively simple culture such as the Polynesians and the 

 Eskimos were able to make very long voyages in the open Pacific 

 and in stormy Arctic portions of the Atlantic. The fact that two peo- 

 ple of simple mechanical culture are known to have made long sea 

 voyages does not, of course, prove that other pre-scientific people 

 made similar voyages on other seas and at other times. It shows that 

 there is no inherent reason why such voyages could not have been 

 made; it makes it more difficult to deny them and easier to accept 

 them. In fact the acceptance of Stone Age voyages across the Bay of 

 Biscay, the North Sea and other Atlantic waters is^ essential to any 

 rational reconstruction of European pre-history. 



Formerly some scholars and many laymen denied the possibility of 



