This is where honesty about the limits of the evidence is essential.

The Chumash people of the historical period — the Indigenous inhabitants of the Channel Islands and mainland Santa Barbara coast who were documented extensively by Spanish missionaries and explorers beginning in the late eighteenth century — built and used a remarkable vessel called the tomol.

The tomol was a plank canoe, constructed from boards split from driftwood and stitched together with cord sealed with pine tar, capable of carrying several people and managing the channel crossing efficiently.

The tomol was a technologically sophisticated craft that represented centuries or millennia of refinement in design and construction.