From Huw Ford, Porthcawl, Bridgend, UK
Your article on Stone Age seafarers asks why prehistoric people would risk sailing towards land they couldn’t see. One possibility is that the motive was belief rather than necessity. A made-up story to get a child to sleep or a legend within a tribe about “land beyond the sea”, repeated across generations, could become accepted as part of their world view. Such a belief is hard to disprove: those who fail never return, while any who succeed confirm the story. In this way, a shared narrative could prompt real journeys into the unknown, sometimes turning myth into geography (31 January, p 32).
