oldest seagoing ships?

[stan - guest]

THE oldest known remains of seafaring ships have been identified in a series of cave stores on the Red Sea coast of Egypt.

The article doesn't say how exactly how old the ships are, but seems to imply that are contemporary with riverboats going back to 2,500 bc.

Obviously such a well- developed system took a long time to
achieve, meaning there were even older boats. So...could they have sailed to the Americas?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0, ... 79,00.html

[Forester]

Here is another report on the same finds, suggesting that they came from about 3500 years ago, perhaps during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut and her expedition to Punt:

A large stone anchor, shards of Egyptian storage jars, and a limestone tablet, or stela, of Pharaoh Amenemhat III inscribed with all five of his royal names were also found.

During the excavation last spring that unearthed the caves, the team found two cedar steering oars which the scientists speculate were used on 70-foot-long ships from a 15th-century naval expedition launched by Egypt’s Queen Hatshepsut to Punt. Well-preserved and intact, the oars are the first complete parts from a sea-faring ship to have been found in Egypt. Near the oars were pieces of pottery dating from 1500 – 1400 B.C. and a stela with hieroglyphic inscriptions detailing the trade expeditions to Punt.

Link to Physorg.com

[stan]

Thanks for that, Forester.

We have another thread on this forum in which the peopling of the Americas was discussed thoroughly, and as you probably know,
some people think the Solutreans came from Europe to Eastern North America.

Likewise, people have suggested the origin of pyramids in the Americas was due to contact with Eqypt! There is a place in Peru called Caral, though, where some pyramids have been recently dated to about the same time as the pyramids of Egypt.

So it seemed that pyramidal structures were bullt independently all over the world, and that knowledge of early seagoing voyages implies that
ships stayed close to shore to navigate, therefore making a crossing of the Atlantic impossible. My point was that this new discovery push back the age of seagoing to a point that may suggest people were more adventurous or more skilled than we thought....I know it's a long shot, though.

[Minimalist]

Likewise, people have suggested the origin of pyramids in the Americas was due to contact with Eqypt! There is a place in Peru called Caral, though, where some pyramids have been recently dated to about the same time as the pyramids of Egypt.

The implications of that are enormous, Stan. It means that there was a civilization in Peru far earlier than archaeologists were willing to admit.

One simply does not get a group of hunter/gatherers together and have them build a structure of that size and complexity. It takes organization, planning, available labor, almost assuredly some agricultural surplus, etc.

We simply do not see primitive hunter/gatherer societies building anything of that nature....they are too busy trying to stay alive.

[Barracuda]

There is "seagoing" and then there is "ocean going"

As a sea kayaker, I know that ships that may have been adequate on the Mediterranean, Red Sea, or even the Indian Ocean would not last long in the north Atlantic, much less the Pacific.

On the other hand...A lone sea kayaker in a modern sea kayak has made it from California to Hawaii....

[stan -guest]

We simply do not see primitive hunter/gatherer societies building anything of that nature....they are too busy trying to stay alive.

I agree that it is important..but
I don't quite get where you come down on this, Bob.
As far as I know, no one contests the dates of Caral, because they were based carbon-dating of the straw bags used to haul the rocks with which they filled their
structures. (We had a little thread on this a couple of months ago.)

Either the meso and south american indians developed the pyramid
independently over a few thousand years (because it was "easy") or else they got it from somebody else.....

The same thing you said so eloquently about what it would take to develop
the culture of constructing such monuments might also apply to large ocean-going vessels.

[stan]

Historians generally agree on eastern Africa, possibly near what is now the coast of Sudan or Eritrea (as is suggested by archaeological evidence). Some argue Punt was as far away as Somalia.

-- from Wikipedia under "Land of Punt."

So they did make it out into the Indian Ocean, at least.

[Minimalist]

Just that archaeology cannot have it both ways. They will have to push the oldest date for 'civilization' in the Americas to account for Caral. All those PH.D.s who hung their hats on a certain date are now hanging in the wind.


I have the same problem with Stonehenge. A pretty convincing case has been made for a time frame of 2500 BC for final construction but we are also to believe that there was no central authority capable of planning, designing and executing the project. Just a bunch of loose clans. It just does not make sense.

As far as the ships go, I agree completely. The ships make trade possible but there must already be some sort of commercial/industrial establishment on either end that the ships can connect. Necessity being the mother of invention only means that there had to be a reason that someone wanted to or needed to design ships capable of crossing the distance involved and carry a useful cargo at the same time.

[Minimalist]

More on the ships.


http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/ ... 030606.php

The Wadi Gawasis site, located about 13 miles south of the modern city of Port Safaga, was an industrial shipyard of sorts with six rock-cut caves that the ancient Egyptians used as work and storage rooms to protect their equipment from the harsh desert conditions, Ward said. Along with timber and cargo boxes, the archaeologists found large stone anchors, shards of storage jars and more than 80 perfectly preserved coils of rope in the caves that had been sealed off until the next expedition - one that obviously never came.

The team also found a stela, or limestone tablet, of Pharaoh Amenemhat III, who ruled between 1844-1797 B.C., inscribed with all five of his royal names. The plaque provided further evidence that discoveries found at the site date to Egypt's Middle Kingdom period. A period of civil unrest and political instability likely put a halt to further exploration, Ward said, and the Wadi Gawasis site was long forgotten