When people of the Stone Age wanted to get from one side of a deep river to the other, what did they do? There were no boats at first, so the only way to do so was to swim across.
This problem of rivers was a big one in the Stone Age. Families had to move quite often. They moved to new forests in which the men could find food. They roamed far and wide – it was move, move, and move.
When a group of people came to a shallow river, the grown-ups could walk across, carrying the babies and the small children in their arms. But when the river was deep and the current strong it was very difficult for men and women to swim across with the children.
So people learnt to make boats.
The earliest boats were certainly very simple – perhaps just logs. How was the idea born? Perhaps the idea came to a man who liked to think about an easier and happier time. Such a man, let us suppose, once stood on the bank of a river and saw a tree floating down the river.
‘Oh!’ he cried, ‘it’s a pity I cannot go on water like that tree!’
He walked along the bank for some time, looking at the log. Then a big idea came to him. He ran into the water, and was soon at the side of the tree. He put his hands on the log and, holding on to it he floated with it down the river. Then he climbed on the log and sat down. The tree floated. The man was riding! Soon he found that he was at some distance from his friends. He could not turn the tree and ride back, so he got off and swam to the bank. Running quickly to the camp, he told his friends about it.
From that day on, the people of the tribe knew that a person could ride on wood in water.
At first, they simply floated with the current. As time passed people learnt to use sticks to make the logs go across small rivers with slow currents.
The boat that was just a log helped in crossing lakes and small rivers, but it was no good in crossing wide rivers with a strong current. Moreover, there was another bad thing about it – the log did not stay steady. If the man moved a little to one side, the log usually turned and threw the man into the water.
One of the men had a new idea. He decided to fix several thin logs together and make a steady boat. He did so. This was the beginning of a real boat.
At the end of the Stone Age, people sometimes hollowed out logs on one side by burning. This made a kind of canoe. Canoes were certainly much steadier than logs. Scientists have found a few such canoes in Europe.
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