Ancient, moss-covered canoe found in Alaska forest

Reuters via YahooNews/AP ^ | Jul 14, 2011 | staff reporter

[Daffynition]

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters Life!) - An unfinished Indian canoe, apparently abandoned 500 years ago, has been discovered in a remote section of an Alaska rain forest, according to officials.

The canoe, carved from cedar, was discovered under a thick layer of moss and is surrounded by trees that are several hundred years old, Sealaska Corp., the Alaska Native corporation that owns the land, said in a statement.

The artifact was first spotted last winter by a surveyor checking potential timber-harvest sites, but the discovery was kept confidential until now, the company said.

[muawiyah]

So, never used ~ did you read the article I referenced? It says the Alaskan Yellow Cedar WAS GREAT for building boats, etc.

The question here isn't what was intended for the log ~ but why it was abandoned.

If it wasn't suitable wood due to size (next to ocean ~ CLUE #1) maybe it's an Alaskan Yellow Cedar.

Or, here's another idea for you ~ they say in that article that yellow cedar has a tendency to end up with a rotted out interior ~ due to a fungus that jus' loves 'dem cedar boards.

So, maybe this is not a start of a dugout canoe but is just a really old log with a rotted interior that's fallen in on top.

Yeah, another artifact those slick trader natives are foisting off on the innocent archaeologists from The Souf'. Oh, my goodness, at this rate they may get Alaska back! I see the village elders gathering everybody together, and they stand there bending at the knees moving their hands and arms as the drums go boom boom boom boom boom ~ nobody sliding on the ice Fur Shur. Yes, through the spirit of my Sa'ami ancestors I am channeling the Haida ancestors and they are telling me how to bend at the knees up and down, and wave my arms, and ask for a MAJOR GRANT from a MAJOR UNIVERSITY to investigate thoroughly a tree that has fallen in the woods.

Boom boom boom boom.........................

[muawiyah]

Uh, indigenous people were making GIGANTIC boats for thousands of years in this region. Ainu traces are heavy all up and down the coast. Possibly related Imeshi/Japanese have been making it around the Pacific Littoral to Peru for incredibly long periods of time.

So, why does this apparent artifact need to be of recent origin or not built by indigenous people?

[skeptoid]

So, never used ~ did you read the article I referenced? It says the Alaskan Yellow Cedar WAS GREAT for building boats, etc. . . .

Copied and pasted from the article in question: . . . .. .he and others have turned a 6-ton Alaskan red cedar log into a nine-man Haida canoe . . ..

The "Alaska red cedar" is actually a Western Redcedar; it was harvested in Southeast Alaska, which is the norther extent of its range.

Alaska Yellow Cedar is a separate species, although its appearance is quite similar. Yellow cedar is denser, stronger, fine grained, and very light in color. Red cedar is the one used for dugout canoes; it's lighter, more easily worked and commonly grows to the large diameter required for dugouts. Red cedar sapwood is light colored, but the heartwood is quite dark. Alaska Yellow Cedar does not commonly, if ever grows as large as the red cedar log in the article.

Large red cedar logs are often hollow. Yellow cedar log are usually sound.

We're talking about two different species with distinctly different wood but very similar appearance in the forest.

This is another instance of a newspaper article muddling details and propogating misinformation. The daily deadline does not allow much time for verifying the details.

[muawiyah]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxnQWYVLWM&feature=related Yupik Dance ~ check the Polynesian imagery. That is now understood. It all began on the mainland across from Taiwan which began sinking leaving only islands behind. The people built boats.

[skeptoid]

Interesting, but irrelevant.

Yupik peoples live 1000 miles from Hydaburg.

They built skin boats because there are no trees large enouh to make dugouts. (red cedar in Alaska is only foud in the southern Southeast)

[muawiyah]

Ah, yes, but they LIVE even now on both sides of the Bering ~ which made them unique up until modern times.

The use of large boats by far Northern peoples is no different from the habits of their cultural cousins in Polynesia.

Which is why it is relevant.

Your point on the size of the log makes sense ~ but was the builder trying to create a boat big enough to take a team out to catch a whale, or was he just screwing around showing someone how to do the job.

BTW, the article said those Yellow Cedars get rotten centers too!

[SunkenCiv]

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[Beowulf9]

“And where’s the nearest river??”

Why do you think the Indian left it there?

[Sacajaweau]

Give you 100 to 1 that white men built this....When they ran out of beer...they left...

Bet it's way less than 100 years old.

[Sacajaweau]

Looks like this is really about some current legislation...and forcing the logging companys to go elsewhere. This canoe is the owl, the frog, the eagle, the snail darter of Alaska!! Just another preservationist tactic.

[Palter]

Indeed, people didn't use a magic carpet back then.

One that stands out were the Saqqaq[Paleo-Eskimo of Greenland], their closest living relatives are the Chukchis, people who live at the easternmost tip of Siberia!

[muawiyah]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Klallam_people_near_canoe.jpg ~ a boat allegedly made of Western Red Cedar ~ which is a Cypress. That’s followed by a boat allegedly made of Alaskan Yellow Cedar ~ which is also a Cypress. http://www.woodenboat.org/content/boat2c/image/bos_600x600.jpg

[muawiyah]

By this time we should be well able to differentiate between a boat of native manufacture and a boat made by the white man or his cultural affiliates. The Sa'ami, white people, invented CLINKER BUILT ocean going boats THOUSANDS OF YEARS AGO and used them successfully in the arctic as well as mountain rivers.

This design was adopted instantly by the Norse when they finally made permanent contact with the Sa'ami about 850 AD (in that period ~ these guys didn't keep good records on the matter). Their Viking class used the design to deal with Europe quite handily.

This design inspired later hull design throughout the world.

I do not quite understand why "white men" would take a step backward into using unfamiliar lumber to build a dugout. They would almost certainly look around for BIRCH, and Alaska in that region has a number of birch species, some in the "bush' category, and others growing up to 30 feet, and easily cut or ripped into planks.

[skeptoid]

Looks like this is really about some current legislation...and forcing the logging companys to go elsewhere.. . . .. ..

To late.

They've already been logged.

Toggle betwee the map view and satellite view.

[muawiyah]

There are competing theories here. Some complain that the cypress forests (so-called cedar) are being devastated by Global Warming as warm ocean currents warm winter air and cause recurring freezing and thawing of cypress bark ~ and that leads to early tree death.

Others point out that Alaskan Yellow Cypress (cedar) grows in and among Western Red Cedar (cypress) and it's been getting harvested heavily (one tree at a time) because people like the clear wood.

Yet others point out that ever since the native peoples turned to clinker built boat hulls themselves (keeping those hard to make dugouts parked for ceremonial purposes only) no one is cutting down the Red Cedar at the same rate as the Yellow Cedar so it only seems like the Red Cedar are disappearing.

Then, there are the guys who noticed that you are pretty far North anyway and things are different in the higher latitudes ~ so maybe nothing at all is happening.

[skeptoid]

. . . .I do not quite understand why "white men" would take a step backward into using unfamiliar lumber to build a dugout. .. . ..

Dugouts are not built with lumber. They are carved from a single log (except one instance in old Chesapeake Bay) A tree is felled and the hull shape is carved away and the inside is "DUG OUT" with axes, adzes, fire and knives. There are no fasteners or frames - just spreaders, in the northwest coast canoes, to flare the hull and raise the ends.

The cabin cruiser you linked in 52 is made of milled lumber; hundres of pieces that are shaped with power and hand tools and fastened together over forms using thousands of fasteners.

. . . . They would almost certainly look around for BIRCH, and Alaska in that region has a number of birch species, . . .

You will not find a birch tree within 200 miles of Kasaan or Hydaburg unless it was planted in someone's yard. Birch is not used as structural lumber and is not suitable for boatbuilding. And David Thompson found that western birch bark is not any good for canoe building.

[skeptoid]

Hogwash

[muawiyah]

Yet the Sa'ami used birch to build ships that could venture into the Arctic!

They made their lumber the same way they made their skis.

Birch (comes in a couple of broad varieties ~ paper and silver) is exceedingly versatile. You can build frames with even small trees, and you can VENEER with it ~ even primitive societies learned that secret. (A little fire, hot water, got your birch veneer).

I looked at the range maps for birch and NUMEROUS species overlap that part of Alaska.

Regarding my use of the word "lumber" ~ once the tree is down that's what it is, "lumber" ~ and if it's a big enough tree and you do it right you can shatter it into useful byproducts when it hits.

[muawiyah]

What is "hogwash" ~ that there's a report that red Western Cedar and yellow Alaskan Cedar is in short supply in commercial quantities?

[muawiyah]

Thanks for reminding me of Thompson.

I believe his problem was not finding "birch bark", so they ended up using a different technique.

There are a great variety of birch trees in the North, and some have heavy bark, and others just have paper bark, but it's very light wood and easy to work with so you just dig on through the bark and do something else.

The Wiki included this statement on Thompson ".....Unable to build a canoe out of birch bark Thompson and his men spent five weeks constructing a wooden clinker-built boat. ......"

That does not mean that Western birch is unsuitible ~ BTW, there are some quite small shrub-like birch trees in that region. Given enough of them you could do a clinker-built boat I am sure ~

Now, about Thompson ~ he was proving out Canada's borders. One of those borders involved the Northernmost inlet to the Inside Passage. Although there's no PROVABLE discovery until the 1700s, the cold, hard facts are that by 1604 when the Spanish were laying down baseline surveys of almost the entirity of North America, they even adjusted their border (between New Spain and the new New France around the Hudson Bay) from 55 degrees North to 54 degrees and 40 minutes North ~ which means "they knew" ~ else, they'd not had a good baseline from Hudson's Bay to the West Coast.

The King of Spain drew a boundary between New Spain and Russia's Alaskan claim at the inlet to the Inside Passage, and that's right there just short of 55 degrees North.

The implications are Spain's own survey teams penetrated as far as Thompson two centuries earlier. They probably dealt with the question of Missouri River connectivity at the same time, which was a tremenous feat and certainly the equal of DeSoto's foray to the Tennessee and Ohio Valleys and then across to Missouri and Arkansas (and, according to some analysts, to Indiana/Illinois and maybe Ohio.).

The Spaniards, if DeSoto is typical, took along substantial resources so they could build whatever kind of boats were needed on demand out of local materials.