A rock art panel from northern Norway's Alta area depicts a potential skin boat transporting two reindeerMartin Kristoffer Hykkerud/Verdensarvsenter for Bergkunst - Alta Museum
Posted on 09/12/2024 9:13:40 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Recent research by Dr. Mikael Fauvelle and his colleagues, published in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology, proposes that the neolithic Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) may have used skin boats to conduct trade, travel, fishing, and hunting activities.
The PWC was a neolithic culture that had migrated from the East during the Early and Middle Neolithic. They settled in what is modern-day Scandinavia around 3500–2300 BCE. This hunter-gatherer culture was named after the pottery they produced, which was characteristically decorated with deep pits along its circumference.
The Pitted Ware Culture (PWC) was unusual among European marine-specialized hunter-gatherer groups. While other such groups gradually incorporated more agricultural products as farming spread, the PWC continued to focus on seal hunting and fishing, even though farming had been practiced in Europe for over five centuries.
The PWC not only continued to hunt seals and fish but also engaged in long-distance voyages across the Baltic Sea and the Kattegat and Skagerrak strait. Evidence for these movements of people and goods can be seen in the lithic tools, animals, and some clay sourced from Sweden, Denmark, and Finland.
To reach these different places, the PWC would have needed seaworthy boats.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
A rock art panel from northern Norway's Alta area depicts a potential skin boat transporting two reindeerMartin Kristoffer Hykkerud/Verdensarvsenter for Bergkunst - Alta Museum
The image link is to the Archaeology mag version.
Are you sure those aren’t drawings of cats?
I sail my skin boat to Tuna Town all the time.
did we not know that already???
Fur business? Or a pleasure cruise? 🤣
“I sail my skin boat to Tuna Town all the time.”
That’s hilarious.
My dad says for him its like pushing a canoe with a rope.
Coracles were small, usually round boats made of a framework of split and interwoven willow rods or other bendable rods like ash, tied together with bark, then covered in tarred animal skin to keep it waterproof. These were used for centuries mostly in Wales but also parts of western Ireland. Fishermen in two coracles would stretch a net between them to catch fish. Coracle craftsmen still make them today.
But wait, that is impossible! There haven’t been any shipyards found!
I stole the line from the movie ‘Grumpy Old Men.’
Let’s just say that I am not good looking enough to get paid for it.
The Viking long boats were inspired by giraffe skins.
That’s not the boat type they are talking about. This is the ocean going currach is.what they mean. This one went from Ireland to North America to prove it could be done with Stone age tech. The First Nations of the far North have a similar boat called a Umiak it too can cross oceans and there is evidence the Inuit people made it as far as the water north of.Scotland in those boat chasing marine mammals. It doesn’t take a large boat to.cross oceans if you have the stones to do it. A German man set out on a Inuit designed kayak he paddled it down river from Germany to the Black Sea out into the Med through the Suez Canal and via the Red Sea into the Indian ocean, he then paddled to India , and cross the India ocean to Sumatra then to northern Australia where he requested to stay they granted it. 20,000+ miles in a kayak so yea humans have been able to cross oceans for at least 50,000 years.
I never said it was. I offered the info about the use of coracles to show that there were other boats made with waterproofed animal skin. I specifically focused on the Welsh using them to fish with nets, nothing more.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
