I am trying to establish a few guidelines for a story I recently started jotting down, based in a seafaring city-state. The setting is a fantasy world and I would like to have some degree of realism in how they go from year 0 when the first settlers land on my island in a primitive canoe to year 4000 when they build ships that have a crew of hundreds and use sails as primary propulsion method.
Being ignorant in the matter I looked up the maritime history of the world and tried to sum it up in the following timeline.
- Year 0: dugout canoe with a simple sail and paddles (fits < 10 people)
- Year 1000: bigger boats (~20 people as the upper limit), single mast with fixed sail and oars, first examples of sewn plank boats; navigation happens only with good weather and mostly along the coasts, exploration of the rest of the island's coasts
- Year 2000: more advanced and robust building techniques (either clinker or mortise and tenon), crews reach about 40 people, better tools leading to navigation in more open waters, new settlements on smaller islands located between my city and the mainland
- Year 2500: the biggest ships have a crew of about 80 people, still employ a single row of oars; they reach the mainland meeting a more advanced and hostile population
- Year 3000: biremes and triremes, with crews of 100+ sailors, 2 masts with square sails are common, experiments with more masts and sails
- Year 4000: first ships designed to travel predominantly by sail power
Is this realistic compared to real history examples? Furthermore, which distances from other islands / the mainland would render the timeline of exploration believable? If the timeline is too short I would rather start from a more advanced technology as it makes the most sense for my other assumptions in the development of the city.