Pesse Canoe
The oldest known boat is around 10,000 years old, but there are experts who point out that humans may have started sailing much earlier.
A Pesse canoethe oldest known physical boat in the world, dates back to around 8000 BC Discovered in 1955 in a peat swamp in the Netherlands, the canoe, approximately 3 meters long, was carved from a single pine trunk and is often cited as the oldest concrete evidence of vessels human. But although this artifact is ancient, researchers increasingly agree that humans likely began using boats tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of years earlier.
Archaeologists widely accept that modern humans were already using boats when Homo sapiens arrived in Australia. According to Mikael Fauvelle, associate professor of archeology at Lund University in Sweden, humans arrived in Australia between 50 thousand and 65 thousand years ago. As Australia was separated from the Asian continent by open ocean, even during periods of low sea levels, this migration will have required some form of maritime technology.
Although no boats from this period have survived, genetic evidence supports this hypothesis. A large study that analyzed almost 2,500 ancient and modern Aboriginal genomes suggests that northern Australia was populated around 60,000 years ago, which coincides with archaeological discoveries such as stone tools and pigments, explains .
More controversial evidence points to even earlier sea voyages. On the Greek island of Crete, Paleolithic stone tools have been dated to at least 130,000 years. Since Crete has been an island for millions of years, humans could only have gotten there by boat. However, some archaeologists question these dates because the tools were found on the surface and do not have precise radiometric dating.
Other discoveries extend the possibility of maritime navigation to a much more remote period. Stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Flores have been dated between 800 thousand and more than 1 million yearssuggesting that Homo erectus may have crossed the sea long before the appearance of Homo sapiens. Tools of similar age found on the neighboring island of Sulawesi reinforce this possibility. Still, not all researchers are convinced that these crossings were intentional.
Archaeologist John Cherry, from Brown University, argues that the first hominids may have reached these islands accidentally, sailing in vegetation rafts displaced by floods or storms, a process that occurs in other animal species.
Why humans first ventured into the water remains an open question. Practical motivations such as fishing, collecting aquatic resources, transporting heavy materials or long-distance migration may have played an important role, as could mere curiosity.
