This is a topic my friend suggested me to write on. Originally I was going to write about all the different types, but I decided to break this up. So, what you get here is the first of many: (how ironic, the first is on the firsts) the first ships and boats ever.
Boats were once the only way to cross oceans. They still are a major factor in many economies such as fishing and cargo hauling. Now, some boats are houses and others hold aircraft. How did these come to be? What are the principles that they work on? Those questions will be answered. But not know.
There is a large list of possible candidates for the first ship. They range from areas such as Egypt and England.
National Geographic originally wrote about a ship on March 7, 2006. Though the data is old, it is still credible. Written by Richard A. Lovett, it details about a finding of massive wooden planks, ropes, and cargo boxes found in caverns near the Red Sea. Lovett states that the find indicates that ancient Egyptian mariners were on the sea as early 4,000 years ago, and on voyages spanning more than 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) each way. The ship previously believed to have been the first was only dated to be 1,300 years old, and was in fragments. This was a monumental find for the field.
The Egyptians were well known as a people who cultivated the Nile, they were people who thrived on a desert, and they were known to have placed barges across the river to transport objects downstream. This ship is believed to have carried sailors to bring incense and other treasure to Egypt, probably to a foreign land called Punt, or God’s Land.
Steven Snape, an Egyptologist at Britain’s University of a Liverpool, though not involved in the work, said the discovery was “very exciting.” He says that historians have long known about the Egyptian travels to Punt, but have debated whether they got their by land or sea. This finding gave conclusive evidence supporting their seafaring culture.
Periodically, pharoahs would send missions of thousands of soldiers across deserts to a port on the Red Sea.
Initially archeologists believed that finding the remains of a vessel couldn't be found off of the coast, even though archeologists knew of the ports location. This idea was overturned in December of 2005 when Cheryl Ward, an anthropologist at Florida State University and other archeologists found pieces of the vessels in six caverns near the port.
Surprisingly the boats there weren't the oldest found. At a now-submerged excavation site called Bouldnor Cliff, a relic almost 8,000 years old was found 11 metres under water. This was the oldest boat building site known.
The oldest planked ships found before the Bouldnor Cliff site were only 4,500 years old. No biggie, only 180 generations. Bouldnor Cliff changed it up.
Interestingly, the site of Bouldnor Cliff was initially found when a lobster lobbed Stone Age flints while burrowing. We support anyone lobbying for the protection of lobsters. They truly help us in the betterment of society.
Garry Momber and his team of underwater archeologists from the Maritime Archeology Trust made some of the most interesting underwater discoveries. Momber says he took an underwater double take after he saw what seemed like woodworking tools.
His team had to wait for two years to revive sufficient funds, and when they got back they discovered remarkable things. Garry says, “We went back to the same area… and saw pieces of worked wood sticking out… among the tangle of the tree roots. They were flat and trimmed, and… you could see they had been shaped by human hands.”
This wasn't enough to discern for certain if the wood was human worked. To find out, they excavated a 2 by 3 metre area.
“We started finding charcoal and the occasional flint tool, … we uncovered wood chippings, well-crafted functional items, and dozens of pieces of well preserved timber,” says Garry.
Some had been shaped by flint tools and others scorched. From the charcoal and heat resistant tools, it was easy to infer that the people were heating wood to work with it easier, but their true motives remain unknown.
Most of the timber had stayed interconnected, but still their function was unknown, till they found a 1 metre piece of wood tangentially split, that is, cutting a lot into two halves, then splitting the top half in half created a tangent and so forth to get planks. This can be seen in the image below.
This may not seem spectacular, until you realize this wasn't seen for another 2,500 years.
While Bouldnor Cliff has the oldest planked boat shipyard, the Netherlands’ 10,000 year old dugout canoe known as the Pesse canoe holds the title of the oldest boat. It was discovered in 1955, and was named ‘Pesse’ after where it was found, near the town called Pesse.
The canoe was a dugout, a boat made from a hollowed out tree trunk. It's dimensions measure around 3 metres long by 0.4 metres wide. The canoe was likely dug out with flint or animal bone tools during the Stone Age.
This type of ship, a dugout, was fairly common: they were used in Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Some were larger than the one found, ranging from 8 metres, like the five ton dugout found in Pangasinan, Philippines to the 18 metre long ones that were used for long oceanic journeys. Those on the larger end could carry up to 80 people.
Dugouts weren't just floatations devices. They often had outriggers to make them more stable, and sails for travel. In fact, dugouts are still used around the world for fishing.
Picture credits:
Tangential splitting: http://www.riven-oak.appspot.com/neolithic.html
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