Was watching a documentary where these researchers built and sailed a viking longship. As they talked about her (the ship) qualities and the things they were discovering about how she sailed they kept asking things like "How we're they able to do this or that?" or "We don't understand how they could, blah blah blah..." And I just thought that the answers were very simple. The men and women sailing on those ships had the experience and knowledge of generation upon generation of previous sailors and adventures on how to handle those ships! And at least some, probably most, of the people on board were experienced sailors themselves! They could make those ships do anything they were capable of doing. The scientists were especially puzzled as to how the Vikings would keep large fleets together, considering they would be made up of many different classes of longship. And each type has different builds, riggings, trims, etc. But, as before, the people knew their individual ship well, and knew what must be done to hold their place in the fleet. Idk, it just seemed that these "experts" were pretty ignorant about their supposed subject of study.
