Citation:
Date Presented:
8-12 Oct.Abstract:
The seaworthiness of the balsa sailing raft, and the seafaring aptitude of those who built and sailed it, has been the subject of critically biased, often conflicting accounts over the nearly five centuries since the Spanish conquest of the Inka empire. This paper objectively marshals historical and archaeological evidence to recover the pre-Columbian design and construction of this ‘Crown Jewel’ of the Peruvian and Ecuadorian fleet, and to demonstrate the role of the landscape – specifically, environmental conditions and available resources – in its development and use. Through this evidentiary reconstruction, it will be shown that, though these rafts appeared primitive to many of the Europeans who saw and wrote about them, the aboriginal balsas of the Andean coast were both well-designed and extraordinarily capable of performing their assigned tasks, which included fishing and coastal trade, and which may also have included lengthy voyages of commerce and exploration.