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Even without sails rudders maps or compasses early peoples were able to

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accomplish astounding things with water transportation they populated the entire [Man in a boat paddling away from a shark]

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earth built cities established trade and dreamt up religious rituals and because

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we apparently have nothing better to do well let's just check out these things [Man browsing past events on a laptop using google]

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one by one well first and foremost there are some places we can't get to by foot

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no matter how nice our fancy leather sandals are we're not going to make it [Man tries walking on water and drowns and Jesus appears]

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to Hawaii unless we get like you know rockets installed on them and that'd be

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really cool but since we wouldn't get rockets installed drowning would

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definitely ensue and our sandals would be ruined bummer and yet humans [Man attempting to fly and falls to the ground]

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eventually traveled to almost every habitable scrap of land on the planet

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well one of the earliest migrations that definitely required boats was the

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journey to Australia for the geographically challenged among us [Caveman standing in a forest]

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Australia is a giant island filled with kangaroos koala bears and lots of

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poisonous things that want to kill us anyway archaeologist thinks that first

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humans landed there about 50,000 years ago which those of you keeping score at [First human landing in Australia]

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home is a really long time humans were just barely figuring out stone knives

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and slings when suddenly they were floating out in the open ocean on rafts out of

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the frying pan into the fire I think that's crazy well then consider [Frying pan sizzles and boy jumps on a bed]

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the Pacific Islands which are the twenty thousand islands scattered like marbles

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across the Pacific Ocean but for most of human history these islands were

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untouched because they were tiny really far away then around 1500 BCE a new and [Map showing the small islands around the world]

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ambitious culture developed around New Guinea the Lupita culture had fantastic

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pottery a good grasp of farming and some pretty sweet canoes and apparently they [Lupita member painting their canoe]

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had the desire to play leapfrog across vast wretches of open ocean but within five

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or ten generations they'd settled most of the Pacific Island and brought along

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pigs dogs and chickens and edible plant now the normal things you tend to travel in [People in grass skirts singing as pigs dogs and plants appear]

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humans were officially everywhere well at some point in human history we jumped

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from small groups of families living in cutesy little villages a huge population [A mother and her children running behind her]

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living in sprawling cities at the hearts of empires

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well that jump is actually super complicated and it happened over a long

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period of time in many different parts of the world for different reasons

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oversimplification well you betcha with that said water transportation was [ships transporting cargo around the world]

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a huge factor in establishing many of the world's first cities and

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civilizations boats are a big part of the reason that most of the old cities

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in the world popped up near coasts and major rivers [A city near a coastline appears]

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well that and you know having water to drink. Ancient people couldn't go to the

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store and pick up some Perrier well boats also allowed large-scale trade to happen

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before there were roads wheels or pack animals floating goods down the river [Two men negotiating trade deals]

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was the only way to get stuff from point A to point B well kind of glad that's

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not how our Amazon shipments show up well consider the ancient Sudanese city

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of Meroe around 800 BCE nice big city a few pyramids great place to raise the [Pyramids in Meroe]

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kids all-in-all a nice place and the wealth

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of Meroe was based on a huge iron industry they made iron that was traded

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all the way to China but how do they get something as heavy as iron out of the [Chinese man receives a delivery of iron]

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middle of the Sudan well on the Nile River on boats or if we want to take a

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more famous example let's look at Stonehenge in England well one theory is [Ancient people moving stones to create stone henge]

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that ancient peoples moved those ginormous stones by flopping them onto

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rafts and float them down rivers another theory is aliens and we're just saying

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Stonehenge could be the result of alien dumping their unwanted stuff on earth [Alien dumping trash out of a spacecraft onto earth]

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now maybe goodwill was too far away

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