How did people in the past manage to travel long distances to other countries and regions of the world?

[Anonymous]

I was throwing up and having a terrible headache on an 8-hour flight from the U. S. to England. So I can't imagine how in the past, people from England managed to endure traveling by ship for weeks on end to reach Hong Kong or Australia, or from The Netherlands to Africa.

[MrOracle]

Traveling any kind of distance - even 100 miles, was almost always risky and dangerous. Even in Europe, which tended to have decent roads and decent laws, you had natural threats (animals, insects, poisonous plants, etc.), robbers/bandits, fraudsters, and of course, natural obstacles such as rivers and mountains.

Traveling by ship was also very dangerous - depending on the trip, your chances of not making it to your destination could approach 25%, with the low end still being 6 or 7%. You had storms, pirates, poorly-maintained ships, incompetent or drunk crews, poor food supplies and often bad drinking water. Lots of things on a ship could kill you - a broken line, disease, or even just saying the wrong thing, which could get you thrown overboard.

If you haven't seen it, the show 1883, which is a prequel to Kevin Costner's Yellowstone TV show, is a mini-series about people on the Oregon Trail in 1883, trying to cross half of the country from Texas to Oregon, carrying only what little they could take in their wagons and saddlebags. While it's a fictional show, the world and experiences it depicts are based on a number of real-world accounts of what those journeys were really like, written by people who had survived them. It shows how something seemingly "easy", like crossing a river, is treacherous and often deadly, and so was going behind a bush to relieve yourself, or saying the wrong thing around an outpost. If you don't know much about that time period, it's really eye-opening about the challenges and struggles people had to face just to get across the western states.

[NathanDavis]

back in 1930, FIFA celebrated the first World Soccer Cup down in Uruguay, which is at the fart south of South America and back then, the most usual way to travel long distances were ships... needless to say that most if not all European national teams declined the invitation because they did not want to spend that much money and so much time travelling such long distances across the ocean... lol, but a few of them made the trip at the end

it was a terrible idea for many national teams as the accounts from the day tell that many players lost their fitness and some got injured as well, as they could not even rest or train properly when spending such a long time in a ship... lol

Uruguay won it that time, probably cause they had all the advantage of being already at home

[purplepoppy]

The amazing thing is people have been doing it for thousands of years, long before ships or horses. Our ancestors thought nothing of walking huge distances and now we complain if we've parked the car too far from the shop.

[MTC29]

At that time, few people traveled for pleasure. Most long-distance travel was done by government agents on official business or people immigrating. I

In the 19th century, if you were on Crown business you had decent shipboard accommodations. If were fleeing the misery of Europe for America (note all of the traffic went one way), you had low expectations to begin with.

Regardless, on a ship, or in most cases a train, you had a bunk in which you could lay down. Time passes easily when you can lay down and sleep, something very hard to do in an airline seat. I flew from Orlando Florida to Sydney, and it was brutal. On the other hand, I sailed from Sydney to Hong Kong in comfort.

[Anonymous]

It wasn't weeks on end, it was months on end. Some sailors in the ancient world would be at sea for years. Going into port and then going back out to sea. I think a lot of people just made that into their life, peddlers and merchants would travel thousands of miles on foot or by horseback or by carriage depending on what period of history.

One fun fact about Egypt is in tutankhamun's tomb there was an iron dagger, but Egypt didn't have any natural iron deposits. That's significant because it proves that Egypt had a trade network far beyond the reaches of its borders thousands of years ago

[DaveJord]

Yeah it was called Africa... everything came up the Nile they did not have to go to it. Then of course the Greeks obviously traded with them. But Iron was around since 3500BC so not all that odd at all.

[Opinion Owner]

Iron was around but it wasn't around in Egypt, the dagger in the tomb is the oldest known piece of iron in Egypt. Also, Egypt's major trade partners being Punt and what is now Sudan complicate things further, Sudan hadn't started their iron works until the 7th century BC which led the iron age in Africa. Tutankhamun was Pharaoh in Egypt during the 13th century BC in the 18th Dynasty

[DaveJord]

In the Mesopotamian states of Sumer, Akkad and Assyria, the initial use of iron reaches far back, to perhaps 3000 BC. One of the earliest smelted iron artifacts known was a dagger with an iron blade found in a Hattic tomb in Anatolia, dating from 2500 BC.

The Assyrians
The Assyrian Empire was much longer-lived than the Akkadian, and its influence was much larger. The empire lasted from 2025 to 609 BCE

Anatolia... modern day Turkey literally right across the Mediterranean sea form Egypt... Iron was all over the Middle East all their neighbors had it and Africa has a lot of Iron. So basically all their neighbors were smelting Iron

[Opinion Owner]

Yes, but that doesn't mean that they were actively trading in Egypt. My point was that as far back as the 13th century in Egypt their trade with other countries had grown large enough to get iron when they did not have any naturally within their borders. And since there is no evidence of iron in Egypt before Tutankhamun, that means that is when their trade network had gotten that large. Yes other countries were smelting iron, but Egypt was not.

[DaveJord]

Yeah I guess your right just wasn't mind blowing to me... obviously they had trade networks.

[Opinion Owner]

Of course they had trade networks, the mind-blowing part was how far the trade network went when they didn't have modern conveniences. Riding horse or camel hundreds of miles is a long rough journey to make with huge amounts of maintenance and feed required in desert heat

[DaveJord]

Dude not mind blowing they were not sailing across the ocean to Hong Kong or the New World. Nor were Egyptians traveling that far it was being passed along form one town to the next to the next.

[DaveJord]

Guess that is why they all got rations of rum and whisky and there were brothels at every port, and venereal disease among sailor were out of control.

What I could never understand was why it was bad luck to have women aboard a ships... I mean those were some seriously long ass voyages with out any women around.

[MrOracle]

It was bad luck because there were never going to be enough women to go around, which meant the men would fight over them, and also they would tend to be distracted with women around. The survival of the entire ship relied on the sailors being extremely focused on their jobs and getting those jobs done in a coordinated fashion. If the crew didn't work together, things could quickly turn disastrous. Those rules existed for very good reason.

[DaveJord]

@MrOracle it was sarcasm... but thanks for imparting your wisdom.

[jshm2]

They were not mixed race weaklings like you, clearly.