From an astounding 800,000 ago, from Africa, watercraft are reported in the journal Science: Ann Gibbons, Ancient Island Tools Suggest Homo erectus Was a Seafarer, 279:5357, pp. 1635-1637, Issue of Science, 13 Mar 1998. The archeological record preserves a history of the dug-out canoe - at the beginning, just a log without tapered ends - i.e. sort-of a square-ended canoe. Archeologists give us dates starting around 6000 BC for specimen of this water craft found buried at sites in Drenthe in the Netherlands, Korea, England, Japan - and, of course, Africa, reported by scientists to be its home of the boat and boating. This web page shows some of the most ancient such vessels known to man. Many canoes from 6000 BC have been excavated.
While dug-out canoes were humankinds first ships, the sewed-plank ships began appearing in North Africa and Egypt near 6500 BC and soon became worldwide - likely with African ship-builders and crews in the earliest millennium.
Were the Phoenicians and Canaanites the ancestors of the Moors and yet Capsa and African as well? And, were the ships of the Spanish Armada of Moorish origin?
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