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Worldbuilding

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    $\begingroup$ Boats and rafts are very different things. A raft is not a boat, and a boat is definitely not a raft. Boats do not float because wood is ligher than water, they float because of the air they enclose. We have found monoxyle boats 10,000 years old... $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Commented Nov 30, 2020 at 20:44
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    $\begingroup$ @AlexP Yes, but would you think to try to build a dugout if you had never seen wood float before? $\endgroup$
    – Logan R. Kearsley
    Commented Dec 1, 2020 at 0:22
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    $\begingroup$ Flying requires sufficient power vs mass and is a difficult problem. Floating is trivial - we float already. Any ordinary person that washes wooden cups in the river/sea/... would soon notice these cups float even though the wood itself sinks. Preventing discovery for an ancient Greece tech level seems impossible. $\endgroup$
    – Zizy Archer
    Commented Dec 1, 2020 at 6:58
  • $\begingroup$ @LoganR.Kearsley: Would you think to build a telegraph if you had never seen wires carry words before? Some inventors are just crazy creative! Besides, all you have to do to "see" metal boat technology is to accidentally drop an empty metal pot into a sink full of dishwater. Any civilization that invents cooking and washing-up is basically one rich aristocrat away from inventing a giant metal pot-boat. $\endgroup$
    – Quuxplusone
    Commented Dec 3, 2020 at 16:30
  • $\begingroup$ @Quuxplusone When you are working in the context of a civilization that already has a long history of transmitting messages by a variety of signaling methods (writing, semaphore, smoke signals, drums, battlefield pipes / trumpets / etc., bell pulls--which are literally actuated by signal-carrying wires!), and you have just discovered a new signaling method... then yes. Cf. never having seen any large inanimate object float. $\endgroup$
    – Logan R. Kearsley
    Commented Dec 4, 2020 at 17:49