LEGEND: This page concerns sewed plank boats. In Egypt,the expedition to Punt crossed the desert. These sewn plank boats would be disassembled for the desert-crossing. This gives an idea for how portable these boats could be. However, the dug-out canoe likely preceded the plank boats by tens of thousands of years though the earliest remains of dug-outs only dates back to near 6000 BC for dug-outs. There are two interesting things in plank boat history. The first is that the earliest are found in North Africa [1] and the second earliest is the longest of all on this page - it is from Mali of 6500 BC. The next surprise is a plank boat in Finland af 4500 BC [3].Plank boats begin to appear everywhere after several thousand years. They are found in Crete [6], Thera [8, 10], Syria [7], Denmark [9], Vietname [5] and Japan [11]. What will prove to be interesting is any possible relationship between the animal-headed Egyptian boat in [2] and Northern European boats of the late Mesolithic to early Neolithic. These were animal skin boats with the heads of the animals still attached. There is no question but that these will be found in later history in Japan, Korea, and the South Pacific. They are even found among the Celts. The question is, though, was there any connection between such boat and those of Egypt such as in [2]. For the record, however, note that on other web pages in this site, it is shown that the African was also found in Northern Europe (see the EUROPE section). It must remain an open question that North African ships of the early Neolithic [e.g. 1, 2] found their way to Northern Europe and elsewhere around the world. ..art, art history, Paul Marc Washington, paleoneolithic@yahoo.com
It would appear Africans first built and propagated the dug-out canoe found the world over. Many canoes from 6000 BC. Many have been excavated. Click here.

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