A
BRITISH team of archaeologists believes that small slabs of
bitumen dug up in Kuwait could hold evidence that man first
successfully built ocean-going boats up to 7,000 years ago.
The
bitumen pieces, dating from 5,000BC, are indented on one side
by impressions of reeds and encrusted with barnacles on the
other. The team, led by Robert Carter, from University College
London, made the discovery while unearthing a Neolithic human
settlement at Subiya, on the northern shore of Kuwait Bay, at
the top of the Gulf.
The Subiya
site in Kuwait yielded pieces of bitumen from 5,000BC, evidence
of early boat building, while archaeoligists were unearthing
a Neolithic human site
“From
the point of view of early trade, and early seafaring, this
is a very, very important find,” said Dr Carter. ‘These
are certainly the earliest fragments of boats ever found in
the Gulf, and possibly in the world.”
The
team, which included archaeology experts from Cambridge and
York universities, said what made the dig particularly exciting
had been the discovery of a model boat from the same periods.
“It
has a surprising amount of detail on it, telling us a lot about
how this Stone Age community constructed its boats. There are
lines coming down from the prow and the stern, which may be
junctions of reed bundles, or ropes, and it’s got two indentations
at each wood were laid across it,” Dr Carter said.
The
Subiya site was first identified 15 years ago by Fahad Al-Wahaibi,
the former director of Kuwait’s National Museum, when he
noticed a mound in the desert with an unusual number of flint
shards scattered around it.
“I
used to go to that area regularly on fishing trips,” said
Dr Wahaibi, “and I discovered several sites that I suspected
were linked with ancient human settlements.”
Sean
Mcgrail, a professor of maritime archaeology at Southampton
University, said that the find, if authenticated, would be highly
important “since very little is known about the origins
of boat building”.
“The
earliest plank boats known until now were excavated from a tomb
at Cheops, in Egypt, and dated back to 3,000BC.”
Excavation
of Subiya site began only two years ago, after Dr Wahaibi met
Harriet Crawford, of UCL’s Institute of Archaeology, at
a conference and invited her to lead a team there. In its first
two seasons, the Kuwait-British Archaeological Expedition unearthed
a complex series of small buildings made from slabs of local
sandstone and evidence of an independent local economy based
on fishing, animal husbandry and making beads and jewellery
form seashells.
Pieces
of flint, quartz and shell were turned into axes, arrowheads
and drills. The arrowheads would be stuck into wooden shafts
and thrown or fired from a bow to kill birds, gazelles and fish.
The shells would be shaped and drilled to make jewellery, which
in turn was traded for pottery from Mesopotamia to north, for
animals throughout the Arabian Peninsula.
Besides
flint and quartz, obsidian, a natural volcanic glass, was also
found at the site, which the team first thought came from Anatolia
in Turkey. Further research however, was established that it
originated in Yemen. “That’s over 1,000 miles away,”
said William Davies, of Cambridge University, “which gives
you an idea of what a wide trading network there was at the
time.”
The
real excitement, however, came this spring with the discovery
that boats might have extended the Neolithic trading network
throughout the Gulf. “We’re going to analyse the bitumen
and see whether it came from Iraq, Kuwait or Iran,” said
Dr Carter. “This might tell us more about where these people
sailed to because these boats were unable to tack in the wind.
With the prevailing winds coming from the northwest, they would
have had to sail down the Gulf. One of the only ways to get
back again would be to cross over to Iran, and pick up the anti-clockwise
currents which run from south to north.”
The model
boat found at Subiya holds details of ancient construction methods
Confirmation
of the boat findings depends on further analysis to be carried
out later this month by Tom Vosmer, a contemporary boat expert
form Curtin University in Australia. “He will look for
structural information form the bitumen,” said Dr Carter.
“He will try to identify the reed species, determine how
the reed bundles were created and joined, decide whether wood
was involved, and see how the pieces and technology compare
to later Bronze Age examples.”
For
Kuwait, stung by the recent suggestion by Saddam Hussein’s
son, Uday, that cartographers should redraw maps to show the
oil-rich emirate as no more that a province of “greater
Iraq”, the discovery of its possible 7,000 year old heritage
could not have come at a better time. Subiya Man is already
being heralded as “the first Kuwaiti”, even though
human remains have yet to be found in the sand.
By
Richard Weekes, The Sunday Telegraph
