Landmass Placement and Migration Questions

[Davush]

Hello,

I have a few questions regarding landmass placement, migration and 'connectedness'. Basically, there are two large landmasses (one in the West, one in the East), which more or less 'connected' by a long chain of habitable islands encircling the two landmasses. This essentially means that it is possible to navigate across the globe in coastal waters. The main impediment to migration are two large deserts.

At the minute, I think the most advanced civilisation will have medieval levels of urbanization/development, but I was wondering how this land placement would effect migration and travel? Does it mean that the world would be more accessible and known? I.e. would civilisations have more knowledge of people on the other side of the planet? Would there likely be more interaction between the two continents?

Any thoughts/ideas/comments/criticism welcome. Thanks!

[Creyeditor]

You might want to look up Polynesian and Melanesian. The first people 'connecting' the two landmasses might have similar routes and timings.

[sangi39]

You might want to look up Polynesian and Melanesian. The first people 'connecting' the two landmasses might have similar routes and timings.

This also raises a pretty good point in that, from what I can remember, as isolated as Hawai'i is, the native population was still aware of other more distant island groups in the Pacific [citation needed].

I think generally it depends on what the "peak travel distance" of a given society is at a given time. For example, the Romans knew China existed, but generally speaking contact between the two was trade-based and often indirect, and similarly Roman-produced goods have been found in areas like Kenya. The Helgö Buddha was discovered in southern Sweden, but originally came from northern India, but again the actually Norse understanding of northern India was probably nothing more than "oh, that's a place".

Your particular world might be easier to traverse earlier on than Earth, but it still might be the case that for a long time, far off places are generally only known through something similar to legend or rumour. Those places definitely exist because their stuff makes it to other parts of the world, but what exactly people know about those places will depend a lot on how far and how regularly people can travel.