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Lodestone & magnetic compasses
Lodestone (magnetite) is one of only a very few minerals that is found naturally magnetized.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lodestone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Magnetic_compass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetotactic_bacteria
In Europe, the magnetic compass first appeared in Amalfi, Italy, around the turn of the 14th century. But it is not known if the magnetic compass was also invented in the West or if it migrated to Europe along trade routes from China. However, it is clear that because sea trade and military advantage were of far more strategic importance to Western nations, they pushed the technology of the magnetic compass far more intensely than did the Chinese. With the successive rise of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English empires, development of the compass shifted to the European nations facing the Atlantic Ocean.
Though the behavior of lodestone, a naturally magnetized piece of the mineral magnetite, was observed by the ancient Greek philosophers Thales of Miletus and Socrates, the evidence is clear that the idea for using it in a compass first appeared in China. There are allusions in the manuscript Wu Ching Tsung Yao, written in 1040, to “an iron fish” suspended in water that pointed to the south. And the earliest reference to a magnetic direction-finding device for land navigation is recorded in a Song Dynasty book dated to 1040-44.
http://theinstitute.ieee.org/tech-history/technology-history/a-history-of-the-magnetic-compass
https://www.smith.edu/hsc/museum/ancient_inventions/compass2.html
The compass was invented more than 2,000 years ago. The first compasses were made of lodestone, a naturally magnetized ore of iron, in Han dynasty China between 300 and 200 BC. The compass was later used for navigation by the Song Dynasty. Later compasses were made of iron needles, magnetized by striking them with a lodestone. Dry compasses begin appearing around 1300 in Medieval Europe and the Medieval Islamic world. This was replaced in the early 20th century by the liquid-filled magnetic compass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_compass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass#Magnetic_compass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birefringence
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordierite
Homo 'navigatus'?: Primitive Humans Conquered Sea, Surprising Finds Suggest: Prehistoric axes found on a Greek island suggest that seafaring existed in the Mediterranean more than a hundred thousand years earlier than thought"
"Providence College archaeologist Thomas Strasser and his team came across a whopping surprise—a sturdy 5-inch-long (13-centimeter-long) hand ax.
Knapped from a cobble of local quartz stone, the rough-looking tool resembled hand axes discovered in Africa and mainland Europe and used by human ancestors until about 175,000 years ago. This stone tool technology, which could have been useful for smashing bones and cutting flesh, had been relatively static for over a million years.
Crete has been surrounded by vast stretches of sea for some five million years. The discovery of the hand ax suggests that people besides technologically modern humans—possibly Homo heidelbergensis—island-hopped across the Mediterranean tens of thousands of millennia earlier than expected.
Many researchers have hypothesized that the early humans of this time period were not capable of devising boats or navigating across open water. But the new discoveries hint that these human ancestors were capable of much more sophisticated behavior than their relatively simple stone tools would suggest."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100217-crete-primitive-humans-mariners-seafarers-mediterranean-sea/
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""From The Trenches: Bon Voyage, Caveman"
"Strasser believes the earliest tools could have belonged to an island-hopping group of Homo heidelbergensis or Homo erectus."
"These ancient mariners would have crossed at least 40 miles of open sea. The sheer number of artifacts indicates that it was not just a one-time fluke, but required multiple crossings to establish a population. "We don't think it was just one guy hanging on a log," Strasser says, "but I doubt there was any sailing." The findings, which will be published in the journal Hesperia this year, add to a growing but controversial view that modern humans and their precursors traveled by sea. So far, the oldest evidence of seafaring by modern humans has come from Australia, which was colonized about 60,000 years ago. Other, potentially earlier, cases have been more speculative."
http://archive.archaeology.org/1005/trenches/voyage.html
http://plakiasstoneageproject.com/geoarchaeology/
Map & Compass
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtakTnKQQMCxMG4CwlrKxmbVdyikMUO3v
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1NfYYkezys
Natural Navigation - WoTV > .
We are wayfinders: Navigation and spatial awareness sustained humans for tens of thousands of years. Have we lost the trail in modern times? .
