Comments by "Angry Kittens" (@AngryKittens) on "Overly Sarcastic Productions"
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@akyhne Longship? Speed? Hahaha. The average longship has a speed of 6 to 8 knots, with a top speed of 13 to 17 knots.
The average Pacific single-outrigger boat (like a sakman or a wa) averaged at around 14-17 knots, with a top speed of 22 knots. All of it on a single triangular sail. They were so fast that all early European explorers described them as being "like birds", and called them "flying proas".
And they could sail into the wind, because they were rigged fore-and-aft, unlike the Viking/European square sails which could only sail with the wind.
This was beaten only when Europeans invented the clipper, which relied on a forest of massive sails to achieve their speeds.
Vikings reached Iceland, Greenland and parts of North America. With the longest distance traveled being around 4,000 km (from Scandinavia to the eastern side of North America).
Austronesians reached Madagascar (off the coast of Africa), a distance of 7,700 km, from Borneo. Did two-way travel for a while, over OPEN ocean, no pitstops. Not to mention the two-way trade voyages between Hawaii/New Zealand and Central Polynesian islands averaging at around 3,000 km. As well as the Austronesian trade routes, the FIRST maritime trade route in human history and the sea leg of what we now know as the "spice trade", connecting Southeast Asia to as far as Japan in the east, and the horn of Africa in the west. Austronesians could pinpoint tiny islands in the middle of the vast Pacific and Indian oceans. And you think Viking navigation precision is better?
Vikings aren't magic sea people. They were land raiders who just happened to build boats for a few centuries in the Iron Age so they could raid villages and establish colonies.
Austronesians have been a sea people for more or less 6,000 years. They lived on islands, and their existence literally relied on the sea, and you think Viikings were better than them at seamanship? LOL.
Look at modern boats. Catamarans/Trimarans and crab-claw sails (oceanic lateens) are two of the technologies used today for the fastest racing sailboats. They're even used in advanced military ships. Both of those are UNIQUE ancient inventions of the Austronesians.
In fact, the fastest modern sailboat, the Vestas Sailrocket (at 65 knots), is literally a single-outrigger boat, based on the ancient Austronesian flying proas I described previously.
Methinks you don't even know who the Austronesians are.
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@akyhne I think you have this weird misconception that Austronesian ships were just "canoes" lol. Probably from watching Moana or something. Nope.
To give you an example, the Karakoa and the Lanong, both from the Philippines, an Austronesian country, carried a total of 150 to 200 men, on top of cargo. The longship has a maximum length of 75 feet. The Karakoa has a maximum length of 85 feet, the Lanong was almost 100 feet in length. There are even monster ships, like the Srivijayan Djongs which could reach almost 600 feet.
Both the Lanong and the Karakoa were raiding ships that could double as trading ships. They are typical of the larger Austronesian lashed-lug plank-built ships of Island Southeast Asia, based on ancient Austronesian designs that were more or less identical. The oldest descriptions of such ships is from Han Dynasty China (c. 200 BC) who called them the 崑崙舶 ("ship of the dark-skinned people"), with three masts and capable of carrying hundreds of people. They're also depicted in the carvings of the Borobudur Temple, which date back a full 200 years before the Viking Age.
No modern ship uses longship innovations. Much less for high-performance or high-efficiency vessels. They only exist in replicas. Meanwhile Austronesian-design vessels are found everywhere from racing boats to fast catamaran ferries to military ships like the US Navy Sea Shadow.
I'm disputing the video's (and your) claim that Vikings were "outclassing the rest of the world in the seafaring skill tree", when they were fairly mediocre in comparison to even the most basic vessels in the Austronesian island world. And worse, Austronesian ship technology are literally thousands of years older than Viking longships.
Austronesians were already sailing from the Philippines to the Marianas Islands (a distance of 2,400 km of open sea) in 2200 BC, more than 2,000 years before Norse peoples built the first prototypes of the the longships.
Heck, the longship design is found in Austronesian ships as well, and is thousands of years older. The shape of the longship is identical to the basic shape of the aforementioned karakoa, as well as the Indonesian kora-kora, right down to the use of treenails and dragon carvings. Even their use as raiding warships are the same, they have shallow drafts, and were also beached when not in use, just like the longship.
The only difference is the sail types (crab claw/tanja sails being superior to Viking square sails) and the outriggers (which made Austronesian boats far more stable than western designs and able to carry more cargo tonnage per size). Austronesian ships were also paddled, not rowed. Other than that, same basic elongated crescent-shaped profile.
Seriously. What in the world gave you the idea that Vikings were the pinnacle of sailing? Or that longships were particularly excellent designs? They were superior in terms of WESTERN designs, but compared to Austronesian ships they were laughably slow, clunky, and inefficient.
And why would I not be able to compare the two? They're all pre-modern sailing ships. Not exactly apples and oranges, is it? The main problem with videos like this, and opinions like yours, is Eurocentrism. Your refusal to acknowledge that other cultures existed with better technologies.
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