The oldest ship in the world that still survives is Dutch. The second oldest is from Africa. They date back to 8000-6000 BCE. This should seem curious because, as we have been looking at the big picture this month, we have seen ancient inventions that go back to the beginning of human existence. We know that somewhere, 100,000 to 30,000 ya, early humans migrated out of Africa, north to Europe, and east to Asia. They didn’t stop there. They kept going down through Southeast Asia and out into the Pacific Islands: Micronesia, Guinea, and Australia. Potentially, 60,000 years ago.
They didn’t walk.
You can talk about land bridges and ice bridges until you’re blue in the face. People did not walk all the way throughout or across the Pacific, even though that has been the dominant narrative for decades. Indonesia was inhabited 32,000 years ago, and at best it was 60 miles from the nearest bit of land back then. There are 10,000-year-old Japanese-style pots in Ecuador and Chilean sweet potatoes in Polynesia.
Thus, for a discussion on ancient ships, there are two essential topics to grapple with. First, since we know that Europe, the Mediterranean, Egypt, and Mesopotamia was active with sailors, what were those ships like? Secondly, what do we know about other ship faring cultures–the ones we have to infer? The islands in the Pacific were populated a lot earlier than the Dutch were building canoes.
Plus, if we want to explore the sophisticated sailing of the Phoenicians or the Minoans, we have to give a little equal time to the Japanese, Koreans, and Chinese. After all, the Chinese invented the rudder. Here are today’s three questions to explore:
- What evidence do we have of ancient seafaring cultures?
- Where and when did ancient ships sail?
- What were these sailors looking for?
How To Find An Ancient Ship
For most of human history, i.e. from Homo habilis until 1820 CE, boats were made out of wood. Wood floats. Most other things that ancient people had access to did not float.
Wood does not do well in archaeological preservation. So, to the extent that any culture built giant boats 40,000 years ago, we probably wouldn’t know about it. The handful of surviving ancient ships that we have, meaning those from 2500 to 8000 BCE, were preserved in unusual circumstances, such as in a peat bog or inside a sealed pyramid. The physical remains of the oldest surviving ships were found in oxygen-free environments. As a result, the oldest is a maximum of 10,000 years old.
But we can also discover ancient ships in other ways. For example, Grecian urns had pictures of Mediterranean trade ships an naval triremes with their three benches of oars, from the sailing vessels of the days of Odysseus (see above) or the pharaohs. Rock paintings sometimes show ships, too, much older than writing.
Modern DNA sequencing has also opened the door to new ideas. Pacific Islanders (Melanesians) are now known to have DNA from both early modern humans and Neanderthals. This means both groups probably migrated to Southeast Asia in ways that were thought impossible. Polynesian archaeological digs have found remnants of sweet potatoes, which DNA testing says originated from Chile, in the early Middle Ages. That’s not ancient, but it’s far earlier than previously thought. Pottery from the Bronze Age in Ecuador looks exactly like dishes from the Jomon Period, 10,000 ya. Each individual example may seem a little thin, but collectively paints a picture of how migrating people moved around Southeast Asia and throughout the Pacific Islands far earlier than land bridges to the Bering Straits. We don’t have their boats. But we have evidence of what they left behind, including people.
River Cultures and Their Delightful Peat Bogs
Since I’ve mentioned the oldest known ship, this is a good time to give the Pesse canoe its due. It’s a dugout canoe that dates back to 8000 BCE–after the move north by Homo sapiens, but before the rise of large cities around the Mediterranean. Dugout canoes have been seen in cultures around the world, likely because it’s relatively easy to make. Chop down a tree and hollow it out. Hence, millennia-old dugout canoes have been found in Africa, Korea, and France.
This particular canoe was excavated in 1955 when the Dutch were expanding the motorway. The nearest university anthropologists were thrilled because the wood had been preserved in a peat bog–the delight of archaeologist because they preserve things so well. It’s not that surprising that the Dutch would have them as their culture has grown up practically on the water.
These canoes were meant for rivers rather than oceans. Ancient human settlements were all built around rivers: the Tigris and Euphrates, the Nile, the Yellow River, the Göta älv, or the Rhine. Even the Olduvai Gorge, where some of the earliest hominid skeletons were discovered, was carved out of rock by an ancient river, though it’s much drier now. Seas are all well and good for trade and exploration, but you can’t drink seawater. Early cultures, needed access to drinking water and irrigation for crops, meaning freshwater rivers. Then they needed small boats to navigate up and down them.
Over the Bounding Main
The river-based settlements in Egypt, Greece, and Mesopotamia probably did notice that there was a big bunch of salty water, not too far away. They needed bigger ships with sails on them to explore, and explore they did. By the time that writing was invented (@3500 BCE), the trade routes around the Mediterranean were pretty robust, bringing textiles from Egypt, lapis lazuli from India, and gold mined east of the Assyrians.
Phoenicians, whose culture was in north Africa but closer to Gibraltar than Egypt, were among the most proficient sailors. They had expert trading vessels rather than soldiers and navies. They weren’t the first to develop writing, but their alphabet and writing approach was simpler than others of the time, so other cultures like Greece adopted the Phoenician alphabet–it was the first trading language.
The Phoenician built watertight ships using boat designs where the bottom pieces attached to the keel through holes and wooden pins. These all fit tightly together, and any opening was filled with pitch. For the record, I’m told that ships are bigger than 500 tons, which might preclude all the vessels I’m discussing today. I’m going to continue to use boat and ships interchangeably, even though boats are smaller than ships.
An Israeli trade ship from 500 BCE was unearthed a few years, preserved partly in mud. Prehistorians rebuilt the ship according to the remaining pieces, and the result can help you visualize what these Mediterranean ships were like.
A Ship So Glorious We Should Bury It
Of course, we’ve all heard about the face that launched a thousand ships. That is, when Helen ran off with Paris to Troy, the Mycenaeans launched a fleet with 140,000 sailors and soldiers to cross the Aegean. The Minoans of Crete had by their heyday, around 1600 BCE, become as proficient as the Phoenicians in trade. By 800 BCE, there was plenty of knowledge, raw materials, and people to build a thousand ships for any navy to attack.
The Egyptians under Thutmose III also built a powerful navy. They started out with cities close to the Nile, but by 1400 BCE were able to mount their own large fleet of ships. Large fleet and large ships as well.
In fact, one of the largest ships found, if not one of the oldest, was buried with Khufu into the tomb underneath his Great Pyramid. The ship was 140 ft by 14 ft, discovered intact when the pyramid was opened in the 1950s. Because of the airtight nature of the burial site, the ship survived the centuries. The photographs typically show a few tiny people heads looking at the great ship (known as a barque) since the ship spans the length of a building.
Maybe They Walked on Water
It’s easy to imagine giant ships being built by people who construct pyramids. If they can construct a calendar or weave fabric, they can surely dig out a canoe. But it’s harder to imagine that hunter-gatherers, who did not build crops or use writing, building outrigger canoes that cross wide stretches of the Pacific.
In fact, this was so hard to imagine that it fueled a land bridge hypothesis, known as the Clovis Hypothesis, from the 1920s until just recently. The idea is that early humans walked during the Ice Age, 20-30,000 years ago, across Asia, up and over the Bering Strait. They migrated down to New Mexico and built a settlement called Clovis. This may have happened because DNA from people on the Pacific side of Asia does match DNA of indigenous North Americans.
However, this hypothesis can’t explain everything. Recent excavations and newer technology has found differently dated site all over the Americas: 20,000 ya footprints in New Mexico; 30,000 ya tools in Mexico; 50,000 ya tools in Brazil; 15,000 ya pottery and food in Chile and Ecuador. Researchers now believe some of these sites were peopled by people who came across the Pacific by boat.
Some find it hard to accept claims that ancient Polynesians crossed the entire Pacific. Still, how do you explain Australia or any of the major Pacific islands? Australian sites date back to 60,000 years. Parts of Indonesia go back nearly 80,000 years. Scholars are careful to mention that sea levels were lower. So did they walk? There are still 50-80-100 miles between some of these sites. The seafarers of the Pacific must have had skills we can only dream of, especially given that they did not have some of the tools we take for granted.
All of the Above But in the East
Last but not least, discussion of ancient ship faring often focuses on the traders of the Mediterranean or the explorers of Micronesia, but there were other significant cultures built around the sea. Korean whaling ships have been dated back to 6000 BCE. Japanese fishing boat designs date back to the time of Khufu’s barque. Given that Japan is an island nation, it’s no surprise that they had a thriving ship-based culture back in the 10,000 ya era, even if there aren’t dozens of peat bogs to prove it.
Plus, let’s not forget China. China has 9000 miles of coastline, so its population also had plenty of time to build expertise. That’s not even counting all their rivers, which they could have traversed on their own dugout canoes.
During the strongest dynasties, starting from the Han but also in the Song, Ming, and others, China built large ships and wielded powerful navies. By the Middle Ages, they built trading ships that were ten times the size of Columbus’ caravels. But even during the Han dynasty, 200 BCE-200 CE, they were innovative. The Chinese are credited at being the first people who installed a steering rudder in the stern. Others might steer by means of oars in the water, but the rudder facilitates turning far more effectively.
Their ships employed different designs–with or without sails, single decker or triple deckers of oars, rudders, or simple paddles. But the one thing all these cultures had in common with the desire to explore. Of all the inventions, that insistence on looking around the next bend, of sailing to see just beyond the next big wave, seems to be the most human of all.
