Floating a big idea: Scientists demo ancient use of rafts to transport goods

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Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology Dorothy Hosler back left on the raft helps row a raft built by four of her students in 2004. Leslie Dewan standing recently worked with Hosler to show how similar rafts carried goods through the Americas ...
Professor of Archeology and Ancient Technology Dorothy Hosler, back left on the raft, helps row a raft built by four of her students in 2004. Leslie Dewan, standing, recently worked with Hosler to show how similar rafts carried goods through the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans. Photo / Donna Coveney

Oceangoing sailing rafts plied the waters of the equatorial Pacific long before Europeans arrived in the Americas, and carried tradegoods for thousands of miles all the way from modern-day Chile to western Mexico, according to new findings by MIT researchers in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.


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