page_title: Dugout canoe
section_title: Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Dugout canoe / Europe
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Der Einbaum von Pesse, ein mittelsteinzeitlicher Einbaum der als weltweit ältestes erhaltenes Boot gilt. English: The Pesse canoe is believed to be the world's oldest known boat. Nederlands: De kano van Pesse is gemaakt van een stuk stam van de grove den (Pinus silvestris). Met behulp van vuur is dit stuk stam, met uitzondering van het voor- en achtereinde, uitgehold. Aan de binnenzijde van deze uitgeholde boomstam is op vele plaatsen nog een dun laagje verkoold hout aanwezig. Ook de buitenzijde vertoont duidelijke brandsporen. De kano van Pesse is het oudste bewaard gebleven vaartuig.
context_page_description: A dugout canoe or simply dugout is a boat made from a hollowed tree trunk. Other names for this type of boat are logboat and monoxylon. Monoxylon is Greek -- mono- + ξύλον xylon -- and is mostly used in classic Greek texts. In German, they are called Einbaum. Some, but not all, pirogues are also constructed in this manner.
  Dugouts are the oldest boat type archaeologists have found, dating back about 8,000 years to the Neolithic Stone Age. This is probably because they are made of massive pieces of wood, which tend to preserve better than, e.g., bark canoes. Along with bark canoe and hide kayak, dugout boats were also used by indigenous peoples of the Americas.
context_section_description: In ancient Europe many dugouts were made from linden wood, for several reasons. First, linden trees were abundant in the Paleolithic after the melting of the Weichselian glaciation and readily available. Secondly, linden grew to be one of the tallest trees in the forests of the time, making it easier to build longer boats. Linden wood also lends itself well to carving and doesn't split or crack easily. It is also lighter than most other tree types in European old-growth forests, and for this reason boats made from linden wood have a better cargo capacity and are easier to carry. 
  The Pesse canoe, found in the Netherlands, is a dugout which is believed to be the world's oldest boat, carbon dated to between 8040 BCE and 7510 BCE. Other dugouts discovered in the Netherlands include two in the province of North Holland: in 2003, near Uitgeest, dated at 617-600 BC; and in 2007, near Den Oever, dated at 3300-3000 BC.
  Dugouts have also been found in Germany. In German, the craft is known as einbaum (one-tree). In the old Hanseatic town of Stralsund, three log-boats were excavated in 2002. Two of the boats were around 7,000 years old and are the oldest boats found in the Baltic area. The third boat (6,000 years old) was 12 meters long and holds the record as the longest dugout in the region. The finds have partly deteriorated due to poor storage conditions.
  In 1991, remains of a linden wood log-boat of nearly 6 meters were found at Männedorf-Strandbad in Switzerland at Lake Zürich. The boat has since been dated to be 6,500 years old.
  In 1902 an oak log boat over 15m long and 1m wide, was found at Addergoole Bog, Lurgan, County Galway, Ireland and delivered to the National Museum of Ireland. The Lurgan boat radiocarbon date was 3940 +/- 25 BP. The boat has holes suggesting that it had an outrigger or was joined to another boat.
  In 2012, at Parc Glyndwr, Monmouth, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK, an excavation by Monmouth Archeological Society, revealed three ditches suggesting a Neolithic dugout trimaran of similar length to the Lurgan log boat, carbon dated 3700+/-35 BP.
  De Administrando Imperio details how the Slavs built monoxyla that they sold to Rus' in Kiev. These ships were then used against the Byzantine Empire during the Rus'–Byzantine Wars of the 9th and 10th centuries. They used dugouts to attack Constantinople and to withdraw into their lands with bewildering speed and mobility. Hence, the name of Δρομίται ("people on the run") applied to the Rus in some Byzantine sources. The monoxyla were often accompanied by larger galleys, that served as command and control centres. Each Slavic dugout could hold from 40 to 70 warriors.
  The Cossacks of the Zaporozhian Host were also renowned for their artful use of dugouts, which issued from the Dnieper to raid the shores of the Black Sea in the 16th and 17th centuries. Using small, shallow-draft, and highly maneuverable galleys known as chaiky, they moved swiftly across the Black Sea. According to the Cossacks' own records, these vessels, carrying a 50 to 70 man crew, could reach the coast of Anatolia from the mouth of the Dnieper River in forty hours.
  More than 40 pre-historic log-boats have been found in the Czech Republic. The latest discovery was in 1999 of a 10 m long log-boat in Mohelnice (Šumperk District). It was cut out of a single oak log and has a width of 1.05 m. The log-boat has been dated to around 1,000 BC and is kept at the 'Mohelnice Muzeum' (Museum of National History). Geographically, Czech log-boat sites and remains are clustered along the Elbe and Morava Rivers.
  Poland is known for so-called Lewin-type log-boats, found at Lewin Brzeski, Koźle and Roszowicki Las accordingly, and associated with the Przeworsk culture in the early centuries AD. Lewin logboats are characterized by a square or trapezoidal cross-section, rectangular hull-ends and low height of the sides in relation to vessel length. In addition, nearly all the Lewin-type boats have a single hole in the bow and two at the stern. The low height is a result of the parent log being split lengthwise in half, in
caption: The Pesse canoe is the world's oldest known dugout
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