Overlooking the sea

Humans have been linked to the coast for millennia, both to migrate, to transport goods, to live or to spend the summer. One of the earliest migratory routes of modern humans left Africa, traversing the Arabian peninsula, India, and the islands of SE Asia until reaching Australia some 50,000 years ago. These humans had discovered the technology of fishing with hooks, which allowed them to adapt to any aquatic ecosystem to feed, and the nautical technology that allowed them to cross the sea among Asia and Oceania islands. Navigation was thus invented some 30,000 years before the wheel.

The coastline is also very suitable for transport, since it took advantage of the force of the wind and avoided geographic features such as mountain ranges or rivers. Today, most of the transport of goods is still carried out by sea.

Finally, the coast is also the most populated area in the world and the most coveted to spend the summer. 70% of Humanity lives less than 500 km from the coast due to climatic reasons: the sea accumulates and releases temperature slowly, so it tempers the climate and favors milder winters and summers than in continental areas. Water also has 20 times more capacity than air to transport heat, that’s why we sweat, and we bathe to cool off.

However, one of the main threats from global warming is rising sea levels. If the continental ice (glaciers, Antarctica and Greenland) were to melt, the sea level would rise about 80 meters, which would be a cataclysm for Humanity. Climate models are not as catastrophic and estimate a rise for the year 2100 of between 0.7 and 7 meters. It may not seem like much, but it would force displacing hundreds of millions of people and we would lose millions of square kilometers of land. Our beloved sea views would change.