Seafaring Conference in Science

The McDonald Institute’s conference on the ‘Global Origins and Development of Seafaring’, held on the 19th-21st September 2007, has received extensive coverage in Science (19 October 2007). The conference reviewed regional evidence of the advent of seafaring and its main developments, such as sailing, from around the world and sought to understand the similarities and differences, and the main factors of change, at a global level. Science correspondent Michael Balter drew particular attention to discussions regarding how the very earliest seafaring, going back 50,000 years, could be inferred from archaeological, genetic and other sources of evidence. The relationship of seafaring to changes in human population size, the dispersal of the modern human species, and climatic and sea level changes through and after the last Ice Age, were also covered. Supported jointly by the McDonald Institute, the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the conference was convened by Atholl Anderson, James Barrett and Katie Boyle.