Since our early days in Africa, humans have been dining on shellfish and other seafood from the Atlantic Ocean. At some point, prehistoric people used small boats to populate islands within inlet seas on both sides of the Atlantic. Eventually, the Phoenicians mastered the Mediterranean and sailed out through the Strait of Gibraltar. Many other maritime events set the stage for global connectivity: The Roman conquest of Britain, Irish Monks, Vikings, longships, Inuit seal hunters, Berbers going to the Canaries, the Mali Empire, the Hanseatic League, commercial fishing, West African gold rushes, investment in Genoise explorers, Bristol voyages, Basque whale boats, Portuguese navigators, Flemish settlments in the Azores, trading posts, colonization, Diaz, Columbus.