I wonder if there was, shock horror, a trade in boats...built in places where the raw materials were extant or in greater supply. Proto shipyards, run by proto shipwrights. I have read a theory that brochs were constructed by dedicated builders who went from site to site, hence the similar design of the 'end product', and wonder if there were other constructional trades, and at what point in UK prehistory they originated. The Egyptians, remember, had teams of trained pyramid builders way before this timeframe. I think it is incorrect to somehow regard the then peoples of these islands as being incapable of a similar degree of organisational and technical ability, and am sure they were capable of constructing whatever logistical necessity required. As I understand it, cattle were a valued and widespread commodity and symbol of wealth, as they still remain to some African tribes today. Cattle and leather boats would have not been a good mix...surely there were craft extant more suited if they and other livestock were so important: the means to accomplish the end. There would have been no problem with the nous to utilise the end product. I have, purely coincidentaly, been researching early seagoing craft as a consequence of a logistical discovery I may have made. The Phoenicians, considerable seafarers, were using large craft called hippoi way back. I do wonder if such craft could have been a template for similar if encountered in UK/Irish waters and proto ports. Perhaps, I hope, due to change in sea level, there's a now silted up estuary somewhere where a well preserved example, maybe an abandoned hulk, still remains waiting to be discovered...something of considerably greater heft than the Dover boat. I am also musing as to whether there may have been a seafaring class or tribe which would have hired out their services and craft for the purpose of bulk transportation, perhaps inspired by encountering those Phoenicians...or did some Phoenicians, lured by tin and other metals, even settle in these islands and exploit a 'gap in the market'? A historical analysis of linguistics of UK and Irish coastal areas and comparision with that of the coast of the Middle East may provide the answer...an aural smoking gun. A clue may even turn up in the song archive at Cecil Sharpe House. I believe if you are to understand the past you need to adopt an interdisiplinary approach. It is so easy to compartmentalise, thereby isolate, and not 'look over the way' and see a bigger, holistic picture. Sorry, please excuse, just thoughts....
