7,000 year old oar found in South Korea

[Ishtar]

I think the oldest boat is also 8,000 years old, but don't think it came from Korea.

Anyway, I know we have evidence of navigational skills hundreds of thousands of years before this (130,000 ~ Crete), but this is the oldest piece of actual boating equipment... well, this and said boat.

SEOUL — South Korean archaeologists said Tuesday they have unearthed a rare neolithic period wooden boat oar, believed to date back about 7,000 years but still in good condition.

The oar was discovered in mud land in Changnyeong, 240 kilometres (140 miles) southeast of Seoul, the Gimhae National Museum said.

"This is a very rare find, not only in South Korea but also in the world," museum researcher Yoon On-Shik told AFP.

"We have to check with Chinese artefacts to confirm whether it is the oldest watercraft ever found in the world."

One of the oldest boats or related artefacts was found in China's Zhejiang province in 2005 and was believed to date back about 8,000 years.

The oar, which was found intact in its entirety, is 1.81 metres (nearly six feet) long.

"The oar was well preserved because fine mud layers completely blocked oxygen from decaying it," Yoon said.

You can read the rest of this article at AFP hosted by Google here

[kbs2244]

If memory serves me correctly,
the evidence of a reed boat in Yemen, a piece of bitumen with some reed residue, was dated to 7000 years old.

That would indicate that salt water boating was a pretty wide spread idea in that time frame.

[Cognito]

The recent finger bone discovery on Luzon in the Phillipines at 67kya required a maritime crossing as well as Australia 50-60kya. The Crete artifacts are attributed to H. erectus with a minimum age of 130kya which, according to the discoverer, could be twice that age. And then there are the lithic finds on Flores dated to 800kya plus, another maritime crossing. Humans have been seafaring for nearly a million years and maybe more.