THE MEDITERRANEAN LOOKS WEST 77 



"long'' means long in time, and the ancient time sense was 

 slower than ours, and danger, to men practiced in their craft 

 of seamanship, was no different from day to day in the Medi- 

 terranean than in the English Channel. 



For the most part these earliest mariners ran within sight 

 and reach of the coast, but it is obvious that on their longer 

 reaches this was not always possible. We know that the Phoe- 

 nicians had a basic learning in the astronomy of the time. 

 They were aware that the Great Bear and the Little Bear 

 wheeled around the fixed lodestar Polaris. Other constellations 

 were used by mariners, but it is unlikely that even a rudimen- 

 tary compass was yet in use — though a simple astrolabe for 

 measuring the angle of the sun above the horizon was a possi- 

 bility. One thing is sure: Tyre and Sidon were one of the 

 earliest known of the great Thalassocracies or sea powers in 

 any part of the world, and the boldness and efficiency of their 

 seafarers were not equalled for more than a thousand years. 

 Like all the peoples of the warm and relatively calm belt of 

 subtropical waters that girdled the earth, they were among the 

 great travelers in the dawn of historic time, together with the 

 Arabs, the Chinese, and the Polynesians. 



To make a little more obvious this necessary point of an- 

 cient attitude toward time and distance, let's drop back briefly 

 to the beginning of ships and trace their origin and the spread 

 around the world of ship design and building. Coastal waters 

 and the open seas form the most natural highway in the 

 world. This seaway leads to new lands from harassed or over- 

 populated areas. Men found their way great distances by raft, 

 by dugout canoes, and in craft whose planks were sewn to- 

 gether with thongs or ropes of vines and hemp. Oars and a 

 square sail were the means of locomotion, in addition to the 

 haphazard use of ocean currents and lucky trade winds, for 

 nothing much was known or charted. 



Probably the first craft to leave the shore were rafts such as 



