European river craft

While in the past the technological capacity of prehistoric man to cope with sea-going conditions has often been underrated, it is important not to become so concerned with this that one neglects the great importance in early periods of inland water traffic. As Grahame Clark has pointed out, travel and transport in prehistoric times occurred very largely on water, ¹ and indeed this remained the case up to the nineteenth century. It is easy to forget that in the seventeenth century it was quicker and more comfortable to go to London from Newcastle by sea than it was by road and how much more would this principle have applied in all earlier times, except perhaps the Roman. Rivers were crucial: it is a commonplace that the first centres of civilisation in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indian sub-continent and China grew up around them. In less developed parts of the world, the importance of river traffic in the past is reflected in the amber routes, the distribution of Spondylus shell ornaments and the Grand Pressigny flint trade. ² So great was the use and importance of this river traffic, in fact, that some authorities have suggested that higher water levels existed in the past. For instance, St Sturm, in the eighth century AD, rowed well above present-day limits for boat navigation on the River Fulda when searching for a site in Germany to found a new abbey. Of Gaul in the Roman period, Strabo says: ‘the course of the rivers is so happily disposed in relation to each other that you may travel from one sea to the other, carrying the merchandise only a short distance and that easily across the plains, but for the most part by the rivers, ascending some and descending others.’ This was helped even more because in Roman times rivers were regarded as public property. ³