The people of the Neolithic Age were obviously skilled seafarers: at least that’s what the worn remains of five canoes, more than 7,000 years old, that were found on the bottom of Lake Bracciano not far from the Italian capital Rome suggest. A team of researchers led by archaeologist Juan Francisco Gibaja from the Spanish National Research Council has now examined the prehistoric boats in more detail. Like it in the specialist journal Plos One reported, people sailed the Mediterranean in technically sophisticated boats as early as the Neolithic. The ancient shipbuilders chose four different types of wood for their canoes and apparently worked them with their own tools depending on the work step. Many important advances in seafaring were apparently made in the early Neolithic period, the researchers write.
The five boats were found in the Stone Age settlement of La Marmotta from 1992 onwards. This is located 300 meters from today’s lake shore near the town of Anguillara Sabazia and lies eleven meters below the water surface, buried three meters deep in the lake’s sediments. These are dugout canoes: One of the boats is made of oak and is more than ten meters long and a good meter wide at the stern. Another canoe was made from a hollowed-out alder trunk and may have been used as a fishing boat, it is said. Other boats are made of poplar or beech. The canoes have been dated to around 5700 to 5100 BC. There are probably other boats hidden at the bottom of the lake.
The fact that the canoes are made of different types of wood is unusual – after all, they were all found near the same Stone Age settlement, the researchers write. They are also complex in construction, for example with cross reinforcements, and were apparently hollowed out with the help of fire and worked with special picks and hatchets.
On the sides of the more than ten meter long canoe, the researchers discovered T-shaped objects with two to four holes to which ropes could once have been attached, possibly to hoist and trim sails. Such a construction requires a lot of technical understanding, so there were apparently specialists for certain activities, the researchers write. Such boats would have to have been manufactured jointly and coordinated by a community.
The scientists believe that the boats are far too big for the lake
The researchers write that the dugout canoes are the oldest known boats from the Neolithic in the Mediterranean region. However, they are not the oldest surviving boats; The oldest surviving dugout canoe is dated to be 8,500 years old and was found in a layer of peat near the village of Pesse in the Netherlands. But the boats from Lago di Bracciano are extraordinary.
The lake has a diameter of 9.3 kilometers today, but was smaller in the Neolithic period, write the researchers led by Juan Gibaja – the settlement that is now 300 meters deep in the lake was, after all, on the shore back then. For such a small lake, a boat with a length of more than ten meters is significantly oversized. For comparison: Pesse’s dugout canoe is only three meters long. Objects made of stone and clay that were imported from far away were also found in La Marmotta. It is therefore conceivable that the boats not only sailed on the lake, but also across the Mediterranean. Experiments had already proven that the boats were seaworthy. Lake Bracciano is connected to the Tyrrhenian Sea via the 38 kilometer long Arrone River.
The boats are now in the Museo delle Civiltà in Rome.
(Photo: Gibaja et al./2024, Plos One, C/dpa)
The boats from La Marmotta also changed the research picture of how the first farmers settled Europe, writes Gibaja’s team. Hunters and gatherers still lived on the continent around 10,000 years ago; However, the first farming communities emerged in the Middle East and spread into Europe and North Africa. Around 7500 BC, communities from that region populated the entire Mediterranean region. The researchers write that it was always difficult to understand how they were able to achieve this within just a few centuries. Apparently they would have used not only the land route, but also the sea. With the help of boats they could have moved quickly and transported heavy loads. Presumably people would have mainly taken short journeys along the coast.