The Indian Ocean - Michael Pearson [23]
It may also be the case that at least on some routes land travel was faster than that by sea, for example where a powerful state had set up secure roads and a courier system and so less lubrication was needed. Where these were available, mails, commercial advice, and low bulk preciosities would go by land. Finally, we noted that much local traffic in the enclosed Mediterranean sea was chaffering from one shore or port to the next. In the much more expansive Indian Ocean this was also the case, but the peddler had much longer times at sea.
In modern times there are still a variety of factors which determine whether transport be by land or by sea. Passengers on long-distance travels go by air, on shorter distances variously by land or sea. Yet even here there can be variations: if people have a lot of luggage they may prefer to go by sea if ships are still available. Most bulk goods travel by sea when they can, though if a shorter land option is available it will be used, such as the railways across North America, and across India. Few goods go by sea from Mumbai to Kolkata, or New York to San Francisco. Some specialised goods can be moved more easily by land than by sea. The best example is oil, where pipelines can obviate the need for sea passage; yet even here, as we have seen so often in the twentieth century, politics can block a pipe line much more easily than a tanker.
What this rather diffuse discussion is saying is that we need to be amphibious when we write of land and sea, rather like a fish found by Jacques Cousteau in the Seychelles in 1967, which was
a species of amphibious fish, Periophthalmus koelreuteri – more commonly, and much less grandly, known as the mudskipper. It is acknowledged to be the most amphibious of all fishes, for it can stay out of water for longer periods than it spends in the water. When on land, the mudskipper carries a supply of water in the gill cavity, and it also gulps air. It is at home on mudflats and among mangrove roots, where it propels itself by 'walking' on its pectoral fins and – in order to move hurriedly – by means of rather spectacular, froglike leaps. In the water, however, the mudskipper swims quite normally. Its diet consists of insects and small crustaceans, in pursuit of which it makes optimum use of its highly functional popeyes to keep watch in every direction.13
Throughout history only a small minority of people have travelled on or depended on the sea. And of those who did, most moved easily between land and sea, and were far from exclusively maritime. Fish demonstrate this matter. For many coastal people fish are not central in their diets, and indeed fisherfolk often will exchange their fish for the preferred land staples of wheat or meat. In any case, fish are a nutritionally inefficient resource – a kilogram of fish provides only about two-thirds the calories of a kilogram of wheat. And fish also are an aleatory resource, that is depending on chance, as compared with rather more routine land-based food production. Yet fish also can be sent far inland, thanks to another part of the maritime scene. Coastal areas produce salt too, at low tides or when marshes dry up seasonally, and salt is vital in transforming perishables, especially fish, into items which can be exported for long distances and so can enter distant