Please join us for a talk given by Professor Jakobina Arch of the History department.
 

This lecture explores technology as a way that humans adapt to specific environments. More specifically, it focuses on ships as a technology that allow humans access to the sea for various purposes. There have been many different designs of ships throughout human history, used in many different marine environments. Why have there been so many different kinds of ships? The specific design choices made for a particular type of ship are adaptations to particular conditions it will be used in. As an example of what a close look at the design of this kind of technology can tell us, I focus on a specific style of Japanese coastal cargo ship which developed in the late seventeenth century and was used through the end of the 19th century (until replaced by steamships). I will also discuss reconstructions of these ships in the late 20th and early 21st centuries which have helped scholars better understand the optimal conditions for these ships to sail in and their points of failure. Such reconstructions also demonstrate some of the ways that modern technologies have changed the way we interact with the sea.