90 : The Atlantic 



languages contain references to "guide stars," "lode stars," "steering 

 by a star" and corruptions like "hitching your wagon to a star" that 

 in time past they may have applied to an old, simple, effective and 

 widely known method of navigation — roving the seas with the aid of 

 the zenith star. 



Thus, step by step we have extended our knowledge of early ocean 

 travel, giving it wider scope in space and placing its origins farther 

 back in time. Homer provides us with pictures of the early Greek nav- 

 igators and their ships and the literary historians have been content 

 to begin their accounts of ocean travel at this period. Even then, 

 Greek ships were well developed and capable of traveling all about 

 the eastern Mediterranean. The forerunner of the Greek ship was 

 undoubtedly the Cretan ship which is known to have made passages 

 to Egypt and probably benefited by Egyptian experience with ships 

 and we have pictures of Egyptian ships that are at least 8,000 years 

 old. Wc must not suppose that the Egyptians were the first or only 

 navigators of these early periods. The Egyptians had no forests from 

 which they could cut large ship's timbers. Such timbers were im- 

 ported into Egypt by the Phoenicians who, of course, had to have 

 ships of their own to carry on this trade. Egyptian records frequently 

 acknowledge their dependence on the Phoenicians. Thus it was Phoe- 

 nician men in Phoenician vessels who in 600 b.c. under the Egyptian 

 King Necho made a passage around Africa sailing from east to west. 

 They, therefore, were the first to discover and sail the South Atlantic. 

 By 700 B.C. these people had established colonies on the shores of the 

 Adantic both north and south of the Straits of Gibraltar in Europe 

 and Africa. 



Again, they were not the only mariners in this region for here they 

 found an extensive trade carried on across the seas by middle and 

 northern European people traveling in vessels of their own construc- 

 tion. This is confirmed by the Greek navigator Pythias who in about 

 330 B.C. made a voyage to Scotland and Iceland. The trade that Pythias 

 observed was no doubt a direct survival of an extensive system of 

 ocean travel that was well established before the age of metals began. 

 Around the year 2000 b.c. there seems to have been a golden age of 

 seafaring when European sailors from Scandinavia to Spain made 

 voyages across such open ocean waters as the North Sea and the Bay 

 of Biscay. This extensive system of travel is said to have had its ori- 

 gins in the period around 3000 b.c. This is as far back in time as the 

 archaeologists now take us but it is clear that a long period of coastal 



