Author: Apiladey ApilSin Date: Jan 11, 2003 - 02:03

In the previous post, I mentioned the great lack of information due to the much greater age of boats, rafts, etc, than either the historical record or archeological finds. When we begin the discussion of boats and ships, we begin a subject that has a further factor of confusion. There are NO good definitions of what is a boat and what is a ship. There are, however, very many bad definitions. These definitions are based on such criteria as the vessel's size, it's number of masts, whether it can go in deep water, and whether it can go in the sea. The definition most often used is one of relative (not absolute) size. A boat is "A relatively small, usually open craft of a size that might be carried aboard a ship". A ship is, "A vessel of considerable size for deep water navigation". Considering the huge variety of boats and ships throughout history, one can easily imagine that many models might fall into both definitions, or maybe into neither. Those who have seen news footage of the USS Cole being carried aboard a repair-barge after the bombing might even wonder if this doesn't mean that it fits the definition of boat more than it does ship. I intend to avoid this quagmire of definitions. If my use of "ship" or "boat" conflicts with somebody's personal definition, please don't correct me.......just forgive me.

The first boats, in Casson's opinion, were either dugouts or skin boats, both of which predate history and any archeological evidence of their invention. The earliest evidence of skin boats (skins, stitched together and stretched over a wooden frame) is in the lower Euphrates River. The boat most often shown on Assyrian reliefs from the 9th through the 7th centuries BC is of a quffa(modern Arabian for the Akkadian quppu) - a round boat which has existed up to modern times as a vessel about 13 feet in diameter and 7 ½ feet deep. They were rowed by four oarsmen. According to Casson, Herodotus mistakenly describes a quffa, They are rounded and all of hides......They are made by cutting willow branches for frames and stretching over these a covering of hides on the outside to form a sort of hull in which they do not make a distinctive stern nor bring it to a point to form a prow but make it rounded like a shield, then attributes the uses of a kelek (a raft larger in size) to it, The biggest can carry a good 5,000 talents [about 125 tons, which was a great exageration]. Each has aboard a live donkey, the larger ones several. After arriving at Babylon and disposing of the cargo, the frames of the boat......they auction off, load the hides on the donkeys, and walk back to Armenia. It has been suggested that Herodotus' visit was during a season when keleks (modern Arabian for the Akkadian kalakku) were not used, so he may only have seen quffas. Assyrian documents mention split reeds as being used to build quffas, so maybe they were used in the frame further down the river where the willows didn't grow. The kelek may have been as large as 50 feet square, using as many as 1,000 bladders. In ancient times the size of a quffa was much more variable ranging from small enough to carry on one's back, to large enough to carry 4 or 5 tons of cargo. Later on, this style of boat was independently invented in many other areas. Probably through the use of boats such as these, stone-age fishermen in northern Europe were catching deep-water fish like cod from the Atlantic. With these same boats, trade was beginning to be set up between Portugal, Ireland, and Norway around 6,000 years ago. Similar skin boats were also independently invented in the Po Valley, the Red Sea, on the north coast of Spain, and on Lake Maeotis (in the Crimea).

Casson says dugouts (or monoxylon in Greek) seem to have been first invented in the Spanish Guadalquiver River (also during stone-age times). Because he doesn't mention the hypothesized invention of what were probably dugouts in the Australia/New Guinea archipelago about 40,000 years ago (mentioned in my previous post), I am unsure if a) this information was available when he wrote this book, whether he was referring b) only to the invention of dugouts within the Mediterranean Sea, c) if he does not accept the hypothesis, or d) if he means the invention of them in Spain actually predated their invention in the Australia/New Guinea area. Whichever possibility, it still sounds safe to say that within the Mediterranean, they were first invented in Spain. The dugout was able to spread eastward through the Mediterranean because they were able to be made sea-worthy by making them higher. This was accomplished by adding planks of wood to the top edges of the boats. The earliest method of attaching planks to the boat was by stitching ........... DANG, they must have had some tough skin on their fingers. Actually, after a lot of fretting over the meaning of "stitched planks", I finally found in a footnoted quote that holes were apparently bored into the planks before the stitching. One layer of planks led to another, as well as the addition of a frame for support. Eventually, the original dugout was dispensed with, leaving the first all-plank boat . The first all-plank boat we have evidence of, however, was from Egypt about 2700 BC. In this model it seems to have been preceded instead by the paving of their reed boats with planks - actually having nothing to do with a dugout. This theory is supported by a) the fact that the first Egyptian plank boats had the same spoon-like shape as their reed boats, b) they used the same bipod masts designed for a reed boat, and c) the pattern of construction was the same as that on their reed boats - planks joined side-by-side (edge-joined, held together with twine) with no keel or ribs. Their reed boats were, similarly, bundles of reeds lashed side-by-side with rope and no frame. The twine used for joining planks varied from place to place. In a play by Pacuvius about Odysseus, the hero constructs his ship out of planks held together by twine made of flax cord and grass fibers to escape Calypso. According to Varro, the Liburnians used leather thongs to hold theirs together while the Greeks used hemp, tow, and other plant products. Pliny, however, says that the ancient Greeks used linen, never with esparto grass fiber. Aeschylus also says the ancient Greeks used linen.

Another early form of boat is the clay tub. They are inexpensive to make and are still in use in India (primarily during flood season). They must, by necessity, only be used in waters free from rocks. In Mediterranean ancient times, they were used in the Nile delta and probably in Greece.

Casson points out that the bark canoe may actually have preceded the dugout, siting the fewer needs of the workman. A bark canoe can be made with a piece of bark (of sufficient size) and a couple handfuls of clay for the ends. I agree that's possible, but I think so many people were familiar with the sight of a log floating downstream, that I would put my money on the dugout.