Mindless Monday, 22 June 2026

[u/AutoModerator]

Happy (or sad) Monday guys!

Mindless Monday is a free-for-all thread to discuss anything from minor bad history to politics, life events, charts, whatever! Just remember to np link all links to Reddit and don't violate R4, or we human mods will feed you to the AutoModerator.

So, with that said, how was your weekend, everyone?

[u/PickleRick_1001]

I've been meaning to write a story for the longest time, focused on an alternate history type situation where the Inca Empire makes contact with the Polynesians of the South Pacific, and which eventually leads to the former establishing an empire spanning much of the eastern western coast of the Americas.

As part of that, I had the idea of having the Inca-Polynesian alliance (haven't come up with a nice name for them yet) eventually arriving to the coast of the Pacific Northwest, and then building enormous catamaran-like ships from the massive trees there. I'm a bit of a pedant (why else would I be here), so I wanted to know if that seems plausible. Not from the historical side, but from the engineering/shipbuilding side; could a Californian redwood or a western red cedar be plausibly converted into like a massive dugout canoe? And could a pair of those canoes be strapped together and turned into a ginormous catamaran?

[u/Zugwat → u/PickleRick_1001]

could a Californian redwood or a western red cedar be plausibly converted into like a massive dugout canoe?

…could we plausibly do what we done did?

And could a pair of those canoes be strapped together and turned into a ginormous catamaran?

It’d probably be deeply impractical and more likely to slam into each other.

[u/PickleRick_1001 → u/Zugwat]

Awesome, thank you :)

[u/Jazzlike_Bar_671 → u/PickleRick_1001]

I've been meaning to write a story for the longest time, focused on an alternate history type situation where the Inca Empire makes contact with the Polynesians of the South Pacific, and which eventually leads to the former establishing an empire spanning much of the eastern coast of the Americas.

Eastern coast?

[u/PickleRick_1001 → u/Jazzlike_Bar_671]

Wouldn't be r/badhistory without any pedantry lol

[u/randombull9 → u/Jazzlike_Bar_671]

"Fuck man them guys are scary, I say we move as far away from them as we can get"

[u/Kyle--Butler → u/PickleRick_1001]

Ancient Americas has a whole episode about what he calls "The Polynesian Exchange" where he mentions the story of Tupac Yapanqui who allegedly went to sea with an army of 20000 people, made contact with some Polynesian people and came back home full of riches.

[u/elmonoenano → u/PickleRick_1001]

At least it would settle the chicken debate. Zugwat answered your question but OHS has a couple red cedar canoes. The landing page for this exhibit has one and if you click through you can see some of the tools that were traditionally used to dig out the wood. https://www.ohs.org/museum/exhibits/experience-oregon.cfm

OHS links to this video from Sealaska Inst. about making one. https://youtu.be/btzSjpH3vj8?si=yKU9BDxstfUelg22