The Early History of the Sea, by Fagan and Mc Gray

Sea going water craft dates back probably before forty thousand b c e. Landmarks and sea marks would have been key to navigation. By the mid a second malineum b c sailers in the south pacific were, of course, doing this by means of what we call environmental navigation. But that doesn't mean there's not an order and a language to the open ocean. And for those who had the wisdom and observational skills of the accumulated knowledge of their ancestors, they could plot their way by these cues. They could read the map of the ocean.