144
8 Transoceanic Trading in Two Oceans
anti-diffusionists’ belief in an independent, non-derivative evolution for these major
civilizations. Anti-diffusionists challenge diffusionists’ cultural and artistic perceptions of parallels between Chinese and New World cultures on the grounds that
they do not meet the requirements for scientific evidence. The same grounds for
objection cannot, however, be levelled at Sorenson and Johannessen’s biologically
and archaeologically secure Indian evidence for persistent transpacific contact with
America. Whether Chinese or Spice Island traders or both were responsible for trading American plants to India, we are dealing not only with a more extensive but also
with a more secure evidence domain.
8.5 Transoceanic Trading
Early traditional accounts show oceanic migrations from the Spice Islands to have
been mostly triggered by tribal defeat and the threat of tribal extinction. Later traditional accounts show medieval migrations within and from Eastern Polynesia were
triggered by population pressures, famine and associated conflict over land and
resources. But trading is ipso facto economically motivated and the earliest migrations and conjectured migrations to Micronesia, Japan and Madagascar can perhaps
most plausibly be accounted for as supplying needed rest and supply stations on
long-distance trading routes. That is, there was a primary economic motive for their
establishment. One of the primary motivations for exploration is trading expansion.
A search for new trading opportunities may well have motivated the earliest Spice
Island exploratory forays into both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Certainly the
conjectured establishment of an early oceanic trading route to Japan and the certain
establishment of the much longer Cinnamon Route across the Indian Ocean place
spice trading high on the list of motivating factors for exploration in both oceans
and for trade-associated colonizations.
A strong economic motivation would explain the long and persistent contact with
America that is implicit in the Indian data, especially in the period of strongest plant
trading activity from 400 BC to AD 800. We have suggested that it is possible that
the increased activity of this period may have coincided with the Spice Islanders’
increasing loss of control over spice sources after AD 76. If this was the case, there
could have been some compensatory, economically motivated, redirection in the
focus of their horticultural trading with increased trading of exotic plants to India
from America. In their trading with America, Spice Island traders were presumably free of the competition from foreign traders and attacks from other tribes that,
tradition tells us, plagued them in the Spice Island region and triggered many migrations from it. That Spice Islanders traded spices to America in a two-directional
trade is conceivable but, given the archaeological fragility of spices, it is unlikely
that archaeological evidence for spice trading with America will ever be discovered
unless evidence is found for the use of cloves and cinnamon as well as of hashish in
Peruvian mummies or advances in molecular science can demonstrate the presence
of Moluccan spices in America from the merest traces.
8 Transoceanic Trading in Two Oceans
anti-diffusionists’ belief in an independent, non-derivative evolution for these major
civilizations. Anti-diffusionists challenge diffusionists’ cultural and artistic perceptions of parallels between Chinese and New World cultures on the grounds that
they do not meet the requirements for scientific evidence. The same grounds for
objection cannot, however, be levelled at Sorenson and Johannessen’s biologically
and archaeologically secure Indian evidence for persistent transpacific contact with
America. Whether Chinese or Spice Island traders or both were responsible for trading American plants to India, we are dealing not only with a more extensive but also
with a more secure evidence domain.
8.5 Transoceanic Trading
Early traditional accounts show oceanic migrations from the Spice Islands to have
been mostly triggered by tribal defeat and the threat of tribal extinction. Later traditional accounts show medieval migrations within and from Eastern Polynesia were
triggered by population pressures, famine and associated conflict over land and
resources. But trading is ipso facto economically motivated and the earliest migrations and conjectured migrations to Micronesia, Japan and Madagascar can perhaps
most plausibly be accounted for as supplying needed rest and supply stations on
long-distance trading routes. That is, there was a primary economic motive for their
establishment. One of the primary motivations for exploration is trading expansion.
A search for new trading opportunities may well have motivated the earliest Spice
Island exploratory forays into both the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Certainly the
conjectured establishment of an early oceanic trading route to Japan and the certain
establishment of the much longer Cinnamon Route across the Indian Ocean place
spice trading high on the list of motivating factors for exploration in both oceans
and for trade-associated colonizations.
A strong economic motivation would explain the long and persistent contact with
America that is implicit in the Indian data, especially in the period of strongest plant
trading activity from 400 BC to AD 800. We have suggested that it is possible that
the increased activity of this period may have coincided with the Spice Islanders’
increasing loss of control over spice sources after AD 76. If this was the case, there
could have been some compensatory, economically motivated, redirection in the
focus of their horticultural trading with increased trading of exotic plants to India
from America. In their trading with America, Spice Island traders were presumably free of the competition from foreign traders and attacks from other tribes that,
tradition tells us, plagued them in the Spice Island region and triggered many migrations from it. That Spice Islanders traded spices to America in a two-directional
trade is conceivable but, given the archaeological fragility of spices, it is unlikely
that archaeological evidence for spice trading with America will ever be discovered
unless evidence is found for the use of cloves and cinnamon as well as of hashish in
Peruvian mummies or advances in molecular science can demonstrate the presence
of Moluccan spices in America from the merest traces.