
How Did People in the Colonial Period Stay Informed? - Thevet
http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/162349
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powera
I think that information disseminating over _twenty years_ isn't evidence of
"sophisticated communication networks".

This article feels like the author is taking a few examples of Native
Americans communicating, and then making no attempt to get from there to her
conclusion that Natives had advanced communcation networks.

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ddebernardy
As I read it, the author didn't imply it _took_ 20 years to decimate the
information, but merely that they were well aware of who they were greeting 20
years later. Still, even 20 years can seem surprisingly short if your working
assumption is that the tribes were very loosely organized and mostly isolated
from one another except in a few areas.

Best I'm aware, travel speed in Middle Age Europe was ~20-40km/day. Such a
high speed was in large part because a) the Romans had paved roads that were
still used then to speed up troop movements, b) they had domesticated horses
and cattle, and c) they had discovered and were using the wheel to cart things
around.

In contrast, native Americans had only domesticated the Lama when they were
around and were only using that as pack animals. (They didn't have wheels let
alone carts.) And best I'm aware, the only areas with paved roads were in
Central America and in the Andes.

Without all of European facilities or modern gear, I'd guess you'd probably do
~10-15km/day (if that). Aztecs had rest points on their road networks every
6-9km; doing one or two per day is a safe bet; maybe a few more if you're
_really_ in a rush.

Further, achieving such "high" speed really assumed a set purpose where you
wanted to go from A to B in a reasonably amount of time for whatever reason
(e.g. delivering mail or a message, moving troops, visiting someone, etc.). I
sincerely doubt this was the case when it came to warning other tribes of the
Europeans. Rather I'd imagine it was more of a word of mouth thing in passing,
with initial groups fleeing with the information, messengers spreading the
word nearby, and traders/embassies slowly spreading the word even further.
That would likely slow things down even more.

~~~
Retric
Walking pace is ~3MPH. On foot people are not doing straight line trips so
~2MPH net distance for long trips is reasonable. Less if navigation is an
issue. As such it's ~1000 hours to go from east to wast coast in the us.

PS: even netting 4h traveling per day that's less than 9 months.

~~~
ddebernardy
~3mph assumes modern equipment and infrastructure. You won't get that with
poorly designed shoes, a poorly designed backpack, on a barely beaten trail,
and without a grocery store with (very) cheap food at every other street
corner. And even if you imagined all of that, it's only less than 9 months
when you're goal driven: you'd want to get a message from the east coast to
the west coast - fast. Without such a goal, you're just looking at the spread
of hearsay through word of mouth - which is slow.

~~~
Retric
Shoes are over rated.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_hunting)
involved ~(16 to 22 mi) in under 5 hours @ 104+ degree temperatures.

Don't forget hunter gatherers had minimal equipment all it takes is for
someone to decide to follow the setting sun and they can make the trip. Water
and mountains are the major issues not so much food.

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prodmerc
Aside from long range information, which was pretty much transferred by people
(on foot or on horses), I find smoke and flag signalling very interesting. The
latter could be used to convey quite a bit of information in a short time at a
respectable distance...

~~~
mariuolo
> transferred by people (on foot or on horses)

It's interesting because natives didn't have horses at the time.

~~~
prodmerc
Then they had to do it on foot, like this guy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pheidippides)

Not an easy task for sure

~~~
mariuolo
Especially when one dies at the end of the run.

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winteriscoming
Ravens

