The Selden Map presents an image of the highly dynamic nature of the East Asian Archipelago in the early seventeenth century. Two important early Chinese maps, the Man Kun and the Selden map, show clearly how far cartography had developed in the by the sixteenth century. To the east, star navigation culminated in the remarkable star charts of Micronesia. We know less about the navigation used in early periods, but close observations of the stars were evidently important. Initially China had very weak seagoing capacity, but by the thirteenth century they came to dominate the region by adapting SE Asian ships. The paper argues that a distinctive split occurred in large shipbuilding techniques, with the eastern regions developing large outriggers, and the western territories large sewn-plank cargo boats, possibly stimulated by technical innovations adapted from South Asian or even Mediterranean ships. Although there is evidence for inter-island traffic from a very early period, only when the Austronesians begin their oceangoing voyages can we be more certain about the types of boat used. The intensive maritime trade networks in the South China Seas were in part the consequence of the development of advanced ship construction techniques as well as navigational techniques.
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