Ocean: A History of the Atlantic Before Columbus

Historian Haywood (Northmen) begins this rich account by noting that historians’ nearly exclusive focus on post-Columbian Atlantic seafaring has reduced “168,000 years of human history on and around” the Atlantic’s shores to “little more than a footnote.” Pointing to the unique geography of Europe—with “the longest coastline in relation to its area of any continent” and numerous inland “nursery seas,” which served as “ideal environments” for learning shipbuilding and navigation skills—Haywood traces the development of seafaring on the continent, starting around 5500 BCE, when hunter-gatherers were first displaced by farmers whose thirst for territorial expansion pushed them to settle “every significant island in the entire British and Irish archipelago within a few hundred years of their first arrival.” After tracking European seafaring through the the Viking era, Haywood then turns to the Atlantic’s other coasts, profiling among others the Calusa, a hunter-gatherer empire that “flourished in southern Florida from around 1100 BC” until the 18th century, ruling over the peninsula’s many tributaries with a “large fleet of canoes,” and the seafarers of West Africa, where a lack of the deep inlets and bays that encouraged costal navigation in other places meant that river transport was the focus, with “canoes of over 20 meters in length” piloting the Niger river delta and venturing into open ocean to fish. Colorfully written with the flair of a seasoned guide, this is an excellent survey of ocean exploration’s lesser-known histories. (Jan.)