The Sea and Civilization, A Maritime History of the World by Lincoln Paine

[Benson Gray]

The first few chapters of this book have an interesting description of the earliest history of canoes and other small craft along with their huge impact on civilization. It opens with a description of some six thousand year old Norwegian rock carvings depicting reindeer hunters in small boats which are the oldest known pictorial representations of watercraft. He then quickly covers the sailing canoes of the South Pacific, other dugouts, skin covered boats, birch bark canoes, and more before moving into planked designs. The bulk of the book is focused on larger boats but it is interesting to see how much was done with small ones over thousands of years.

Benson

 

[Roger Young]

Based on Benson's excellent description, I went out and got myself a copy of this book. What a read!!! I'm only in the very early chapters (and this is a very thick book), but I'm already impressed by the extensive contributions to the history and development of mankind's occupation of our world through maritime voyages by canoes, kayaks, etc. While I have long collected native models from around the globe, even I didn't know that part of our world history involved canoe and other watercraft history going back as much as 50,000 years in some places, and probably at least 10,000 years in North America. Kind of makes one appreciate that, as nice as our late 1800's/early 1900's antique canoe factory show pieces are, they are but a small step in the much broader and far longer cultural history of maritime adventure. Thanks for posting Benson. I am already recommending this to all my friends as a great (and essential) summer read.