The great geographic discoveries led to a multifaceted cultural exchange between the European and nonEuropean societies, with the net result that European shipbuilding practices were adopted, copied, or just simply ignored in other parts of the globe, notably in India and the Far East. In spite of all appearances, the local methods of shipbuilding did not vanish, but were maintained throughout the centuries, as the survival of lashed and pegged hulls of the mtepe boats on the Kenyan and Somalian coastlines is showing. More than that, some types seem to have been copied back to Europe, the best example being the Portuguese caravela whose design seemingly was copied after Arab fishing craft. And while the Arab dhow was the basic goods carrier in the Persian Gulf until and after the appearance of the European craft in the region, the Indian subcontinent witnessed a multitude of craft, from dugouts with or without outriggers and catamarans to keeled planked vessels of complex construction. Even today, one can document in different parts of the Indian subcontinent the traditional watercraft, their longevity being in fact maintained by The existence of a specific group of people in the local community: the boatbuilders called biswakarmas in West Bengal. Further east, the Chinese medieval ships whose hulls were built of up to six layers of planking reached as early as the nineth century AD the Gulf of Aden and the African coast.
World History
