Abstract
From the earliest days of settled human habitation, people have ventured into the Indian Ocean for sustenance, transportation, and trade, developing varied efficient sailing or fishing technologies to exploit the sea. It has been navigated systematically and intensely for over 5000years—far longer than any other of the world’s seas—and is the first to have been traversed by humans. By the second millennia BCE, sailors understood the patterns of monsoon winds across the Arabian Sea, which would reliably reverse its direction twice each year. The Indian Ocean, the third largest on Earth, was a key conduit of exploration, migration, and commerce, allowing interaction and exchange between the earliest human civilizations. And yet, of all the world’s oceans, it is the least studied and understood by modern scientists and scholars. This brief historical overview covers prehistoric and ancient times to approximately 1950, describing the salient peoples and activities of the maritime Indian Ocean World.