The Roots of Shipbuilding: Rafts, Skinboats, and Dugouts

Mankind was attracted to water since the very beginning of history, water as primordial element occupying a central role in most ontological mythologies around the world. Therefore, it is assumed almost unanimously that man made its appearance in the aquatic environment accidentally or purposely through the use of the available naturally floating materials of that time: by lashing loose tree trunks to make rafts, by using animal skins and/or tree bark to make seagoing craft, and by carving a single log of wood to make a sturdy logboat. In nautical archaeological parlance, all these craft are considered the ‘roots’ of shipbuilding technology, out of which all types of craft evolved in the course of history. The first traces of such craft were registered in the Netherlands, where the logboat from Peese, with its earliest 14C dating (8760 ± 145 year BP), ranks as the oldest in Europe. The dating of European logboats made J. N. Lanting to distinguish two continental zones of earliest logboat appearance and diffusion: one comprising the coastal zone stretching from Normandy to Denmark and the other, shaped like a cove, comprising Northern Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Due to their perishable nature, the other two ‘roots’ of shipbuilding are not so clearly discernible in the archaeological context, as the Bronze Age site from Dalgety, Fife (Scotland), with its graved coracle imprint shows, and this situation led to the creation of positivist theories emphasizing the logboat primacy over the other two less-trackable ‘roots’ of shipbuilding. However, nautical anthropology cannot thrive only in the narrow confines offered solely by the archaeological evidence notwithstanding its power of persuasion, and for this reason it needs to search for information from other sources. Fortunately enough, the ethnographic evidence from the last century confirmed the existence of both skinboats (the curragh/coracle type in Ireland and the British Isles) and that of barkboats (Borneo bark logboats, North American canoes, etc.) and historical sources indicated the use of hideboats in Mesopotamia, the Iberian Peninsula, Northern Adriatic, Normandy, and the British Isles. As regarding logboats of large dimensions, they were reported ethnographically from the Far East, especially from New Zealand, Borneo, from Polynesia, South America, Africa, North America, Siberia, and from Europe. Expanded logboats were particularly sought for their lightness by the Finno-Ugric peoples living on the vast expanses of forested land stretching from the banks of the Obi River in Siberia to the Saami/Finnish Baltic regions. The existence of these craft until nowadays seems to confirm not only their ubiquitous usage but also their endurance as watercraft type throughout the history of mankind. Although relatively simple to manufacture, without requiring extra tools and expensive materials, these primary craft fulfilled the transport needs of the Stone Age man and his successors up to our times.