this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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The seeds are carried by birds and can survive in a dormant state for years.
Lots of stuff like trees washed away by rivers end up floating in the ocean.
But it's also perfectly feasible that a limited trade happened far in the past.
Polynesians showed that you can reliably cross even the pacific on boats made using stone tools and fire.
Humans before the Ice Age were fishing for tuna in the deep sea and were coastal hopping everywhere there are coasts to hop.
Most of human history:
collapsed inline media
Limited trade... There were full on global trade networks through most of human history. Ironically, not as much across the Atlantic, because civilization in the Americas was centered on the West coast
But you find all sorts of stuff turning up everywhere. Not much of it, and most of it is lost to history, but enough to establish that global trade networks were the norm and not the exception
My favourite trade fact is that when the Norse settled Newfoundland, it was theoretically possible to send an item from Patagonia to Melbourne via American and European trade routes, the silk road onto the treppang fishers and then into Australian aboriginal trade routes. But I'm just realising it could probably have gone the other way via Easter Island as well