Could people in an open boat and with few fuel reserves survive an extended period sailing through icefloes?
Boating along the ice and in ice floes gives ample protection from winds and high seas. If things get dicey, simply pull up on the ice and wait things out. We don’t know what fuel reserves they may have had or needed. Seal, auk, and whale blubber is abundant in ice edge environments and has been used successfully as a fuel for thousands of years. Driftwood is also readily available along sea ice margins at times. Were the Solutreans ahead of their time in many ways? How advanced were they? In most ways, Solutrean people were a product of their times. They lived a typical late Pleistocene existence along with other cultures. What we do see, possibly related to the special environmental situation during the glacial maximum, is a tendency toward innovation. The Solutreans are credited with a number of technological innovations, such as the spear thrower, the bow and arrow, self-barbed spearhead, refined flaking techniques (eg pressure flaking) and with the beginning of maritime exploitati
