Maritime history dates back thousands of years. The earliest watercraft used by humans were rafts, as they needed less sophisticated wood-working skills to make. The oldest archaeological survival of a prehistoric boat is a dugout canoe, the Pesse canoe, which dates to approximately 10,000 years ago. Dugouts probably coexisted with hide-covered boats, which are much less likely to survive for archaeological investigation. Some evidence suggests that archaic hominins may have crossed the sea as early as 700,000 to one million years ago.
In ancient maritime history, evidence of maritime trade between civilizations dates back at least five millennia. Egyptians had trade routes through the Red Sea, importing spices from the "Land of Punt" and from Arabia,Rawlinson 2001: 11–12.see Trade_route of Maritime_trade and the Sumerians traded with the Indus Valley civilization around the same time. By the time of Julius Caesar of the Roman Empire, several well-established combined land-sea trade routes depended upon water transport through the sea around the rough inland terrain features to its north. The search for the source of spices in these maritime trade routes later led to the Age of Discovery.
Maritime prehistory General principles The earliest seafaring is presumed to have developed in the "nursery" areas of Island Southeast Asia (ISEA) and the Mediterranean. Both ISEA and the Mediterranean had a warm climate and, particularly in the former, large numbers of intervisible islands; both assisted early seafarers. Water transport also developed on major rivers, such as the Nile.
The first watercraft are likely to have been rafts, as these make fewer demands on the woodworking skills of pre-neolithic builders. Rafts or hide-covered boats (e.g. coracle) have a low probability of surviving in an archaeological site; there are historical instances of rafts being dismantled after use and the components being used for other purposes, further reducing the chances of archaeological survival. Therefore, maritime transport has to be inferred from evidence such as human migration which cannot have been carried out by land, even in cases of lowered sea levels due to extensive glaciation. Other presumed evidence of water transport has proved problematic. Excavated bones of pelagic fish species (such as tuna) have been erroneously interpreted as demonstrating deep-sea fishing. Prior to fish stocks being reduced by commercial fishing, these species have been readily caught where deep water exists close to the shoreline.
The invention (or adoption) of the sail is believed to have happened quite late in the prehistory of maritime transport, coinciding with other changes in the process of neolithicisation. Iconographic evidence of sail in Egypt dates to the late fourth millennium BC, and there is suggestive evidence in the eastern Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf in the late third millennium BC. These advances in water transport are broadly contemporaneous with wheeled transport pulled by draught animals (examples ). The invention of new forms of transport technology, both at sea and on land, have posed questions about relationships between the processes that have come into play with each development.
Whilst the invention of the sail may appear obvious to a modern seafarer, its introduction and then spread into other regions (or the independent invention in those regions) happened slowly. From the eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea/Persian Gulf , expansion into the central Mediterranean and the west coast of India happened . Eastward spread into the Bay of Bengal and Island Southeast Asia has been dated to , with spread into the western Mediterranean at about the same time. Northern Europe, excluding Nordic countries, has evidence of sail use from the early years AD, whilst Scandinavia appears not to have used sails until late in the first millennium AD. Sailing was not used in the Caribbean until the arrival of Columbus' ships in 1492.
Whether the sail was invented on different occasions in different places is difficult to assess, with diffusionist theories falling in and out of fashion. One instance of independent invention may be in the region of the Guayaquil river in modern Ecuador. Sails of a relatively unique design were being used when Europeans first arrived in the area in the 16th century. The geography of the Guayaquil river is reminiscent of that of the Nile, with the prevailing wind going in the opposite direction to the flow of the river. This allows drifting downstream and sailing upstream: a suitable situation to encourage invention of sailing.
Island Southeast Asia into greater Australia The lowered sea levels of the Pleistocene made some of the modern-day islands of Sundaland accessible via land bridges. However, the spread of anatomically modern humans across the Wallace line and into Sahul necessitated crossing bodies of water. Remains of stone tools and marine shells in Liang Sarru, Salibabu Island, North Sulawesi, dated to 32,000–35,000 years ago, is possible evidence for the longest sea voyage by Paleolithic humans ever recorded. The island was previously uninhabited by humans or hominins and can only be reached from either Mindanao or the Sangihe Islands by crossing an expanse of water at least wide, even during the low sea levels of the Pleistocene. Other evidence of early maritime transport are the appearance of obsidian tools with the same source on neighboring islands. These include the Philippine obsidian network (Mindoro and Palawan, ), and the Wallacea obsidian network (Timor, Atauro, Kisar, Alor, ). However, the method of crossing remains unknown and could have ranged from simple rafts to dugout canoes by the terminal Pleistocene.
The sea crossing by humans to the Sahul landmass (modern Australia and New Guinea) from the Sundaland peninsula occurred around 53,000 to 65,000 years ago. Even with the lower sea level of that time, this crossing would have involved travelling out of sight of landthe overall distances involved at the possible crossing points are all over 55 miles. It is likely that large bamboo rafts were used, possibly with a sail of some sort. Up until 58,000 BP, the winds during the Northern Australian wet season were particularly favourable for making this crossing (relevant even without sails). The reduction in favourable winds after that date fits well with the single colonisation phase of Australia during prehistory.
In the history of whaling, humans are believed to have begun whaling in Korea at least 6000 BC. The oldest known method of catching whales is to simply drive them ashore by placing a number of small boats between the whale and the open sea and attempting to frighten them with noise, activity, and perhaps small, non-lethal weapons such as arrows.
Austronesian expansion
Austronesians used distinctive sailing technologies, namely the catamaran, the outrigger ship, tanja sail and the crab claw sail. This allowed them to colonize a large part of the Indo-Pacific region during the Austronesian expansion starting at around 3000 to 1500 BC, and ending with the colonization of Easter Island and New Zealand in the 10th to 13th centuries AD. Prior to the 16th century Colonial Era, Austronesians were the most widespread ethnolinguistic group, spanning half the planet from Easter Island in the eastern Pacific Ocean to Madagascar in the western Indian Ocean. They also established vast maritime trading networks, among which is the Neolithic precursor to what would become the Maritime Silk Road.
The acquisition of the catamaran and outrigger boat technology by the non-Austronesian peoples in Sri Lanka and southern India is the result of Austronesian contact with the region, including the Maldives and Laccadive Islands. This is estimated to have occurred around 1000 to 600 BC and onwards, and led to the development of India and Sri Lanka's own maritime trade networks. This may have possibly included limited colonization that have since been assimilated. This is still evident in Sri Lankan and South Indian languages. For example, Tamil paṭavu, Telugu paḍava, and Kannada paḍahu, all meaning "ship", are all derived from Proto-Hesperonesian *padaw, "sailboat", with Austronesian cognates like Javanese perahu, Kadazan padau, Maranao padaw, Cebuano paráw, Samoan folau, Hawaiian halau, and Māori wharau.
Similarly the first encounter with large sea-going ships by the Chinese is through trade with Southeast Asian Austronesian ships (likely Javanese or Sumatran) during the Han dynasty (220 BC–200 AD) as recorded by the Chinese historian Wan Chen (萬震) in his 3rd century AD book "Strange Things of the South" (Nánzhōu Yìwùzhì – 南州異物志). This led to the development of China's own maritime technologies later on, during the Song dynasty in the 10th to 13th century AD.
At the furthest extents of the Austronesian expansion, colonists from Borneo crossed the Indian Ocean westward to settle in Madagascar and the Comoros by around 500 AD.
In the east, the first true ocean voyage was the colonization of the Northern Marianas Islands of Micronesia from the Philippines. This was followed by more migrations southwards and eastwards to Island Melanesia up to islands beyond the inter-island visibility range like Tonga and Samoa. This region was occupied by the Austronesian Lapita culture. After a gap of about two thousand years, the first Polynesians continued spreading eastwards into the Cook Islands, French Polynesia, Hawaii, Easter Island, and Aotearoa, New Zealand by around AD 700 to 1200.
Austronesian seafarers used environmental navigation systems: orientation at sea is carried out using a variety of different natural signs, and by using an astronomy technique called "star path navigation". Basically, the navigators determined the course of the ship to the destination by recognising the rising and setting positions of certain stars on the horizon.
Māori people of New Zealand are said to have navigated following the zodiacal constellation of Scorpio, between Libra and Sagittarius in the southern sky positioned at about 16 hours 30 minutes right ascension and 30° south declination to find, Aotearoa, "The Land of the Long, White, Cloud".
Ancient routes and locations
Ancient maritime routes usually began in the Far East or down river from Madhya Pradesh with transshipment via historic Bharuch (Bharakuccha), traversed past the inhospitable coast of today's Iran then split around Hadhramaut into two streams north into the Gulf of Aden and thence into the Levant, or south into Alexandria via Red Sea ports such as Axum. Each major route involved transhipping to pack animal caravan, travel through desert country and risk of bandits and extortionate tolls by local potentiates.See: Arabian Sea Trade routes
Maritime trade began with safer coastal trade and evolved with the utilization of the monsoon winds, soon resulting in trade crossing boundaries such as the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Bengal.Denemark 2000: 107. South Asia had multiple maritime trade routes which connected it to Southeast Asia, thereby making the control of one route resulting in maritime monopoly difficult. Indian traders had a choice of routes to Southeast Asian states, so protecting them from one power controlling trade that went through their territory. By making use of the maritime trade routes, bulk commodity trade became possible for the Romans in the 2nd century BC. A Roman trading vessel could span the Mediterranean in a month at one-sixtieth the cost of over-land routes.Scarre 1995.
Sumer
Egypt
The Ancient Egyptians had knowledge of sail construction.Hatshepsut oversaw the preparations and funding of an expedition of five ships, each measuring seventy feet long, and with several sails. Various others exist, also.