Archaeologica.org

What is the earliest evidence of sail technology anyone has seen or heard of?

Actual physical evidence? Probably relatively recent finds in Egypt of rigging and such in an apparent store room.


Otherwise, Robert G. Bednarik is a leading proponent of Homo Erectus sailing.

http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199907/0064.html

"There are no known depictions of water craft in Pleisotcene art, and no
physical remains suggestive of navigation older than 10 500 year have ever
been found.

Thank you for that info. Depictions in art would be evidence. Still wondering about the earliest. Once you have sail power, you're good to go.

wxsby wrote:What is the earliest evidence of sail technology anyone has seen or heard of?

That depends on how you look at it, wxs.

You could consider Meganthropus paleojavanicus to be that earliest evidence. By inference: MP lived on the island of Java by 1,57 mya. So he either walked there or he sailed there. Before 1,57 mya!
Walking is considered by most, today, to have been impossible as most punters posit there were deep, and wide, straits/channels between Java and Sumatra and Malacca, just like today, which would have prohibited crossing on foot. I disagree with that position as I think early HE could (and did) walk across the continental SE Asian plain because sea levels were up to 400 feet lower than today. It was dry land!
But if the majority, that doesn't (yet...) agree with me, is right then HE could only have sailed to Java! Before 1,57 mya!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganthropus

Yeah....unless someone ever made a boat or sail out of stone it seems unlikely that we'll ever find a remnant of a HE boat in Indonesia.

I can see an immediate technical problem with a stone boat.

Minimalist wrote:I can see an immediate technical problem with a stone boat.

Archimedes didn't. And neither do I: the majority of the thousands of houseboats in Amsterdam's canals, e.g., are made of concrete, a.k.a. cement (underwater)! And they can stay afloat for well over a century...

Just imagine a concrete 'shoebox' without the lid. Lower it into the water and it will float (thanks to Archimedes). Then build a lightweight (usually wooden) house on top, and Bingo! you have a houseboat (with a huge, though low cellar; ideal for storage).
It's really that simple.



So although it's not very likely that HE built entire stone boats, the concept is certainly technically feasible. I.o.w.: don't rule out stone boats too fast!

Stones as ballast Yes-boats made principally of stone No.

Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat

Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat

Actually, I have a friend with a cement sailboat who has sailed it all over the world. I didn't volunteer to go with him.

But I don't see early man, no matter how great his knapping skills, making a boat out of a boulder... or maybe we have just been thinking small and not looking for the right thing...

Archimedes didn't.

Ever hear the phrase...."sink like a stone."

Sam Salmon wrote: Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat

Note-a barge is a damn sight more 'seaworthy' than reed or balsa rafts which didn't preclude the latter two to be used for crossing oceans.

Minimalist wrote:

Archimedes didn't.

Ever hear the phrase...."sink like a stone."

Often enough. And you've seen that it doesn't apply to cement boats/barges, so why would it to stone boats/barges? Archimedes' principle of the Golden Crown, weight-to-volume ratio, precludes it.
Only, you'd need a couple of pneumatic jackhammers to 'chip'/chisel a stone boat/barge. And they weren't easy to come by, 1,6 mya. So the odds that stone boats/barges were actually built then are slim.
And, if any were ever built the odds that they would survive a million years wouldn't be bad at all. So we would probably find them. We haven't (yet), however. Probably because there aren't any.

Any boats or rafts then built of organic materials would have been hard pushed to survive in a recognisable state beyond 5 years in that super humid equatorial monsoon climate. Let alone a million years.

Rokcet Scientist wrote:..... pneumatic jackhammers to 'chip'/chisel a stone boat/barge. And they weren't easy to come by, 1,6 mya. ....

I like how threads stay on topic (NOT!). Archaeolithic sailors..hee...hee... At least the ways to bomb threads are sometimes entertaining.

Rokcet Scientist wrote:..... Any boats or rafts then built of organic materials would have been hard pushed to survive in a recognisable state beyond 5 years in that super humid equatorial monsoon climate. ...

The first sailors story needs some context from experience perhaps, rather than speculative assertions. I have lived in that environment and with hunter/gatherer-adapted Natives in the Amazon Basin, and leather goods could not survive the moisture level unless placed in the sun to dry. We preferred using canoes hollowed from large trees in rivers with currents, and rafts are very easy to make to move goods like game, fish caught, or shelter materials downstream. Canoes last a long time because they function after becoming water-logged. In the Pacific Northwest the trees were large enough for ocean-going canoes. Two canoes tied together and you can go from rivers onto seas.

Regarding walking vs. floatation, there is a deep ocean trench separating the Sundaland plate and Wallacea. It seems unequivocal that these two land areas have never been connected, hence any hominids settling in Wallacea crossed water somehow in reproductively-viable numbers.

We beaten this one to death, archaeo. In a maritime environment it is simply unreasonable to expect that one would find the remains of organic materials used for boat or raft building after 750,000 years.

As you say, the depth of the ocean trenches precludes walking so a degree of deduction is needed to see how HE colonized those islands. A boat seems the logical answer.

archaeo wrote:Regarding walking vs. floatation, there is a deep ocean trench separating the Sundaland plate and Wallacea. It seems unequivocal that these two land areas have never been connected, hence any hominids settling in Wallacea crossed water somehow in reproductively-viable numbers.

If you support that theory you ignore 2 million years of tectonic/volcanic activity in the most tectonically/volcanically active region on the planet! And if you do, the consequence can only be that HE knew how to sail before 1,57 mya! A bit longer ago than 10,5 kya, isn't it?

Well -

Do not lose all hope ye who enter here.

There is the natural process of mineralization.

Looking around my study, on the windowsill is a magnificent piece of petrified wood, then

A beautifully preserved fish, right down to each bone and fin from the Green River shales in Utah,

And a Miocene antelope horn who's tips are still clearly and neatly chewed by a Miocene mouse (Eumys? Don't remember).

Anyway, the newer stuff has generally been preserved in an anaerobic environment of some sort,

Your typical bog/mud situation.

Plenty of older stuff has been mineralized, including, if I remember correctly, a piece of 120k old whale skin

From one of the S. African coastal sites.

It is not a matter of if, but when some persistent person finds the right shale deposit on an ancient coastline.........

Then, jump back!, because Das Klub will immediately bring out their heavy guns

To prove that it is just another geomorph which happens to look like ribs and planking, or whatever.

Me, I'm betting on some bright thing from the neoDarwinians to come out with an authoritative paper

On just why Homo s. lost his early and obvious ability to walk on water

Through a mutation which messed up his specific gravity.

cheers,

john