The only explanation I can come up with is that the 316ers time-shifted (from early-2008 back a couple months to late-2007).

Pre-1988 – “X” number of canoes

1988 – Left Behinders flash (from ~2008 – Ep. The Little Prince) back to 1988 with the canoe

1988-2008 – “X+1″ canoes

2008 – Left Behinders take canoe from their beach camp (see Ep. The Little Prince)

2008 & beyond – Only “X” number of canoes exist

UNLESS…Arija 316 has travelled to the past and we just haven’t been filled in on that tidbit yet. Then Locke could tell Richard about his Excellent Adventure as you described.

but that’s just me.

I trust Darlton.

A few comments.

Re: Danielle and Jin, IIRC, she didn’t have a whole lot of face time with him, maybe not enough to recognize him in her addled mind.

When she first approached the Lostaway camp in Season One with all the “Other talk,” he was on the raft.

The only real time we know for certain they shared face time were in “Greatest Hits” when she and Jack were showing off the dynamite and in that episode in Season Four where pretty much everyone was choosing sides to go with Locke or Jack. And in both of those episodes, there were so many people mulling about that chances are good that she may not have even noticed him.

And though it’s slightly OT for this, I want to take this space to push my “Locke is like Desmond” theory because there are just some things that still don’t sit well with me about some bits we’ve seen. Unless you want to buy into the psychic or “reincarnation” thing, the childLocke scenes in “Cabin Fever” don’t make a whole lot of sense unless Locke’s consciousness is jumping around on some level.

Exactly HOW did he recognize the compass and sand and knife?

What’s up with the smoke monster pic? The producers certainly made a big deal out of it, something I doubt they would’ve done if it was supposed to be just a big coincidence.

RWG (and Locke was, like Desmond, at ground zero when Des turned the failsafe key)

RWG (I’m hoping we get more explanation of this “Dalia Lama” test thing sometime)

I don’t know that the second offer really had anything to do with Sawyer’s meeting with Alpert in ’74, though it would certainly be cool if the numbers worked…then, again, they may have been meant to, but the producers screwed up on the timing, just like the screw up on a lot of stuff that gets glossed over…

RWG (but I felt that Alpert never really “gave up” on Locke, he was just being “paitent”

Why Richard found it initially interesting in 1954 could easily be explained later in the series. Heck, everyone gets bizarre precog dreams on Craphole Island, why not Richard Alpert?

And that’s not even taking into account that it’s probably his “job” to be on the lookout for strange stuff.

RWG (thus his fascination with youngBen when he claimed to be following his dead mother)

Let’s just say for instance that both Charles Widmore and Richard Alpert were part of the crew of the Black Rock (Stay with me.) Magnus Hanso is the captain, Alpert a first mate and Widmore a swabbie (at age 17.) The compass belongs to Hanso. Something happens after they arrive on the island. Hanso is killed* (note ‘killed’ not ‘dies of natural causes.’) Richard and Widmore do not because after you are indoctrinated on the island (enter the temple, perform a raindance for smokey) you do not die of natural causes (entirely plausible and long a theory of mine.) You do not age. Widmore stays 17. Widmore is banished from said island by way of frozen donkey wheel a la Benjamin Linus. He ages… rapidly. As does Eloise Hawking. Richard remembers the compass from the Black Rock. Voila.

MAJOR HOLES! you say…. Yes. Why does the compass travel into the future to Richard to give to John Locke in the jungle? We don’t know, but this could still be explained.

How is it that Ben seems to age from being a young boy to being the 50 year old adult we know him as today? Perhaps because he has never been accepted by the island, the same reason that he had a spinal tumor and was stricken to a wheelchair while the island is healing John Locke and RAISING HIM FROM THE DEAD.

I dunno, in all honesty, ever since “the Constant” & “the Shape of Things to Come” and perhaps since the first time we laid eyes on the Black Rock, I wanted there to be a real tangible connection to the present. I wanted to see a flashback to the Black Rock’s arrival. I wanted to believe that Richard or Widmore or Jacob or Christian or someone was ON that ship. I’m betting that in the next few episodes this theory will be dead because we will learn more about Widmore leaving the island.

Dwaine Stroud
Athens, AL

So the rope may indeed have led someone to dig the well to the frozen donkey wheel, but it did not lead to the construction of the frozen donkey wheel itself. What if the wheel has existed since the beginning of the island, like perhaps it is the gearbox for the whole alien timeship… The natives could have discovered the rope and dug the well. What if the idea of the natives is misleading in itself? Perhaps they existed long before the Black Rock but were not the first inhabitants of the island.

Can anyone recall if the pillar with hieroglyphics was present when Locke turned the frozen donkey wheel?

On an unrelated note, I’d like to offer that perhaps the captain of the Black Rock had foreknowledge of the island’s existence as it seems apropos that it was christened “the Black Rock” and arrived in the center of a massive electromagnetic Black Rock.