There's been a lot of talk about which European discovered America first, but how come the native Americans never found their way to Eurasia, or Africa for that matter?
>>421697
Perhaps because the trade routes to India being cut off by Ottomans did not incentivize them to search for alternate routes?
>>421730
Well the Vikings had nothing to do with the Ottomans for example and they discovered the New World on their own.
>>421746
That is true, however, they were
1) An maritime power with an established presence on Iceland and Greenland before they made the relatively short jump to the continental portion of North America.
2) They didn't stay & didn't venture further south then their initial landing sites.
But to your original question once again:
What possible reason would civilizations in the Americas have for sending ships out into a seemingly limitless body of water?
The presence of certain sweet potato species in the South East Asian Pacific seem to suggest that some South American fishermen managed to maroon over there.
They wuz primitive and sheeit
>>421811
Or Polynesians made contact with Native Americans. The Polynesians were pretty good at seafaring after all.
OP, you have to keep in mind that most Native societies were incredibly tiny and often dispersed over a large area. And even then, as far as I'm aware, none had sailing.
They had an entire meta-continent to themselves so there was no need
>>422248
I think OP is thinking about the mesoamericans empire, who would have had the means to do some serious seafaring if they had tried.
Some bands of the Yupik people regularly sailed their ocean kayaks from the islands of the Bering Strait to mainland Siberia. I've also heard rumors of sporadic contact between Aleuts and the Koryaks of Kamchatka before European contact.
>>422248
I think it is pretty much a given that some Polynesians reached the Americas multiple times. The thing is that there are sweet potatoes related to other different Andean sweet potato species in Polynesia, meaning they originated from South America, and Polynesians going to the Americas and then RETURNING to their homeland would be considerably more unlikely, given that they'd have to be extremely lucky twice, and also inhumanly daring to subject themselves to a trip of months in the sea twice.
>>421697
Because the insisted on a culture centered on being beta to the Eruos
I don't think any of the American cultures had the sail, at least none that I can think of.
>>425432
Polynesians were the most skilled seamen outside Europe by a wide margin and colonized the whole Pacific ocean with nothing more than the stars, birds, clouds, and blind luck to guide them. I wouldn't underestimate their ability to return home once they reached the Andes civilizations.
