The first known account of surfing was written during the 1640s in what is now Ghana. Surfing was independently developed from Senegal to Angola. Africa possesses thousands of miles of warm, surf-filled waters and populations of strong swimmers and sea-going fishermen and merchants who knew surf patterns and crewed surf-canoes capable of catching and riding waves upwards of ten feet high. Popular histories of surfing tell us that Polynesians were the only people to develop surfing, that the first account of surfing was written in Hawai‘i in 1778 and that Bruce Brown, Robert August and Mike Hynson introduced surfing into West Africa. All these claims are incorrect. This is according to Surfing.com by way of University of California history professor Kevin Dawson who writes about longstanding connection between African people and the ocean in Undercurrents of Power: Aquatic Culture in the African Diaspora.