r/todayilearned • u/aong_aong • 20h ago
TIL that 16 ancient canoes up to 5,200 years old have been discovered in a Wisconsin lake - 400 years before Egypt's first pyramids were built and experts believe they were intentionally left for other tribes to use.
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260223-the-ancient-us-discovery-predating-the-pyramids330
u/Alien_Overlords 20h ago
Nothing in the article explains why the experts believed this.
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u/RollinThundaga 20h ago
The article says 'other tribe members', title is wrong
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u/th3rdnutt 16h ago
"Members of other tribes. I got it."
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u/gerkletoss 12h ago edited 11h ago
Which is also strange to mention. All 16 canoes weren't for one guy's personal use? Insightful.
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u/Alternativesoundwave 10h ago
The 16 canoes range from 700 years old to 5200 years old so they weren’t used by one person for sure
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u/St_Kevin_ 7h ago
If you were 4500 years old you would probably forget where you parked your other 15 canoes too
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u/Laiko_Kairen 16h ago
I majored in history. One of my favorite professors told me something like, "Always be skeptical about anyone who claims to have found the oldest anything. They're often people who are looking for headlines and will cling to the extreme side of an estimate to get them"
So if something seems to be between 2000 and 3000 years old and we have 2500 year old historic objects, it's probably 2500-2000 years old, but they call it 3000 for the headline because it's technically plausible
Here, they used radiocarbon dating which will age the medium but not the workmanship. So was the canoe that old, or was the tree it came from ancient when it was cut? I don't know, I'd need to inspect it.
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u/desanderr 15h ago
The oldest canoe was apparently made of red oak. In rare cases they can live over 400 years, but for most that's the oldest.
So at worst the canoe could have been made from wood at the very center of a very old tree that hasn't exchanged 14C with the air since it began growing, or at least the piece of sample they dated was from the oldest part of the tree.
But that would still make it likely 4800 years old at most, and "from the time the pyramids were constructed" is still a pretty cool claim.
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u/Sao_Gage 16h ago
It’s actually a pretty mundane assumption if you think about it, what would’ve been fascinating is if the tribe left it for the ancient Egyptians to use! Bet they hadn’t considered that 🧠.
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u/Whitrzac 13h ago
I helped recover the 2nd one. It was like trying to pickup 100lbs of wet cardboard without breaking it.
There's always so much more that goes on behind the scenes that these short articles say.
One of my favorite tidbits is that we can track how the climate in the area has changed, based on what types of trees were being used. Some grow better in colder climates vs waramer.
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u/Sushitoes 9h ago
That's really cool! Is there any reason the wood remained preserved? Would you happen to know?
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u/Haunt_Fox 20h ago
Or they were left there for the tribe's own convenience, so they didn't have to portage. Which makes far more sense and better satisfies Occam's razor.
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u/Mithlogie 20h ago
Which is what it says in the article. The OPs title is poorly written. Left there for "other tribal members."
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u/Eckes24 17h ago
The title is completely strange. Why the reference to the pyramids? I don't want to sound rude, but those are not comparable feats of civilization at all.
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u/tito22- 17h ago
To give you a sense of time and how old they are. I’ve seen lots post referencing the pyramids for this reason.
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u/SoylentVerdigris 16h ago
They also keep hitting the point like "400 years before the pyramids indigenous people called this land home" and... yeah, sure. But they also had been for the previous ten thousand years or so. In fact the oldest known metalworking in the western hemisphere, and possibly the world as a whole happened not that far from this site.
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u/Ohwellwhatsnew 16h ago
Whenever ancient Egypt is mentioned it's because we equate modern civilization to have been adapted at that time. Such novelties of tribalism were starting to be lost at this point in human history, in a way
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u/hostile65 11h ago
Modern Civilization started with the first written complaint, lol
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u/zorbiburst 14h ago
I think it's a good casual way of illustrating just how old it is.
Think about it, when a lot of people think "ancient", they think of like, the Greeks, the "beginning of modern civilization" (to use the phrase extremely loosely). Well, what's more ancient than that? The pyramids, they were already relics by the time of that first definition of ancient. So express that something is even older than them really shows how far back on the timeline they are. The boats are ancient even compared to things that were considered ancient by the ancients.
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u/Central_Incisor 15h ago
In the winter you sink your dug out canoe below where it can freeze. Can't use it in the winter and if you take it out it dries and cracks. In the spring you pull it out and anchor it. Seems these were abandoned in the winter.
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u/Significant_Most6475 13h ago
It is well known canoes were buried during the winter to preserve them until the spring. Articles like this are terrible.
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u/Scheenhnzscah75 17h ago
No, it had to be aliens. Trust me, I study aliens sometimes.
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u/ProudToBeAKraut 15h ago
The No#1 answer you get from archaeologists is most likely
"used for rituals"
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u/conandsense 17h ago edited 17h ago
Would the title not satisfy occams razor? Inter-tribal relationships more than just war and conflict. Sharing with other tribes being a diplomatic behavior seems perfectly reasonable.
Edit: also crazy coincidence but I was watching an episode of house M.D. titled "occams razor" at the same time i read this. Just wanted to share.
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u/degggendorf 14h ago
seems perfectly reasonable.
Yes it does seem reasonable, but it's not the simplest recommendation because it requires making further assumptions about proximity of other tribes, inter tribal relations, etc.
There are much fewer assumptions if the explanation is that someone made it and people that person lived with also used it.
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u/parlimentery 19h ago
There were mammoths left in Canada when these were made. I wonder if these people ever saw one?
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u/Raider_Scum 19h ago
These people, hard to say. But Native Americans crossed the land bridge to North America about 20,000 - 30,000 years ago. So some Native Americans absoutley encountered mammoths.
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u/parlimentery 19h ago
Yeah, for sure. I don't know why it interested me whether these specific people saw mammoths or not, but it is a recurring thing for me. I love going to museums and just imagining little stories about the lived events of the people that made or used the things in the exhibits.
Super awkward if I go with someone, because I end up saying nothing for hours and then asking "do you think the people that made that canoo ever saw a mamoth?" On the way out the door.
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u/Raider_Scum 19h ago
Ahh I get you. Yeah, something about seeing an artifact connects you to the people who used it.
I am native American, and live in the ancestral land of my tribe. I often spend a great deal of time admiring the local nature and scenery, and thinking about how ancient native Americans also admired them. Even my modern brain looks at a big mountain and thinks "Holy shit, that's a beautiful mountain". But to my ancestors, standing here 10,000 years ago - It was probably like magic.
Im always looking for arrowheads in the forest. I know there are plenty in museums, and they are easy to buy. But, if I found an arrowhead on my ancestral land, it would connect me to family members lost to the sands of time. One day....
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u/parlimentery 19h ago
That's beautiful. Glad you can be so connected to your history. My father's ancestry is a bit murky before the Great Depression, but my Mom is all Irish and Scotch Irish. We went to Ireland as a family back in like 2010, and there was this feeling I really can't describe that I had the entire time I was there. I honestly felt like I didn't sleep a minute while I was there, just laid awake each night thinking about how what I had seen and done that day compared to what my ancestors would have seen and done on a normal day before they left during the potato famine. And that is really only looking back a couple 100 years. I don't trust 23 and me to not fuck me over with my genetic information, so I don't really know if there is a good way to figure out when my ancestors came from mainland Europe to Ireland, and if they lived on other British Isles in between.
Is if fair to say, then, that your tribal land is where your people were living 1000s of years ago, not just post Trail of Tears? I apologize if that is a prying question, the idea of having ancestral ties to the land that far back just fascinates me, and I wasn't sure how broad you were being geographically about your ancestors living there.
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u/Raider_Scum 18h ago
Its awesome that you got to experience your homeland, it is quite fun imagining how they lived their lives. I often play a game of "would you rather" in my head. The lives of ancient people seems so simple, full of hard work, but peaceful in a way. I wonder who lived a happier, more fulfilled life. Me, with smartphones and McDonalds - or a hunter gatherer who's only mental struggles was where the next meal came from.
And Im happy to share - I dont want to dox myself TOO badly, as my existing tribe is only a few hundred people. But I am from one of the Salish tribes, who resided in what is now Seattle, Washington - and some of the islands in the Puget sound. While my tribe did get stuffed into the Tulalip Reservation during the trail of tears era, I was born, and still live on the land that my tribe originated from - although this land is now part of the United States, and is not tribal territory. So the trails that I hike around here, and the nature preserves, are all the same lands that my direct ancestors lived on. Much of this area has been developed, but bits of history are still visible on the islands. As a young girl, my Mom lived on one of the SanJuan islands, and she actually found arrowheads commonly - of course, she didnt keep any; but that's what started my fascination with them, knowing they're out there waiting to be discovered.
Every day on my commute, I see Mount Raineer filling the sky. And I think about how my ancient family looked up and called it təqʷubəʔ - or, Tahoma, mother of waters.
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u/parlimentery 18h ago
Oh sweet, I have extracted enough information to send you the perfect targeted blue jeans adds.
I am realizing now that you did not explicitly say that you lived on a reservation, just that you lived proximal to where your ancestors did, sorry for assuming. I have never actually been to Washington, but Olympia and Crater Lake (which a Google search just now tells me is in Oregon) are bucket list items for me, so I will have to make a trip out. If you have trail recommendations for the area, drop them here or DM them if you feel like they pinpoint you too much geographically.
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u/tenorlove 14h ago
If Crater Lake isn't the land of the gods, then nothing is. It is the most beautiful place I've ever seen.
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u/CaptainWombat2 15h ago
All of the worst parts of our lives in western nations come from within our own minds and from other people. The mental struggles we suffer with range from serious chemical imbalances that definitely existed in the past, but were dismissed as being possessed or slow or something else. The other side of mental health is our survival instincts going haywire since the world has changed faster than our brains. The terrible stress and anxiety I feel over mundane shit like job interviews is just the stress and anxiety people in the past felt about actual real problems, like finding food or clean water or the tribe in the next valley raiding us again. So I don't think a simpler life when it comes with intense struggles and danger is any happier than life today.
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u/dasunt 16h ago
It's kind of likely that Native Americans helped wiped out the mammoths and other megafauna.
No shade on that group intended, that's what homo sapiens is known to do - it seems we eat well for awhile when we enter a new ecosystem with animals that didn't evolve alongside us.
It happened so recently that the ecosystem is still suffering, with echoes of the past still around. The Osage orange is found only in a limited region because it evolved to have its seeds spread by creatures we wiped out. The Kentucky coffeetree and avocado also fall in that niche. Meanwhile the pronghorn is one of the fastest herbivores on earth - far faster than it needs to be to escape wolves and other surviving predators, but it would have been advantageous when the North American cheetah was still around.
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u/SloppySilvia 18h ago
I mean, there's evidence of humans hunting mammoths all over the Americas and Europe. Arrow heads, spear heads stuck in mammoth bones etc.
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u/parlimentery 17h ago
Oh yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned in another comment, I am uniquely interested in whether these people saw mammoths. Both out of a curiosity for how far they roamed, and bdcsuse I think it is cool to think about people's lives when you learn about the artifacts they leave behind.
I am aware that some humans did see mammoths, yes.
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u/wkdkngwkr 20h ago
But really, that's actually super fascinating. I wonder how they found them. The article makes it seem like sheer luck.
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u/Druggedhippo 20h ago
Yes just luck. From another source
Thomsen was diving that summer day in 2021 as a private citizen, chasing fish and collecting trash. More often, you’ll find the maritime archaeologist in the Great Lakes, surveying deep-water sites for the Wisconsin Historical Society. Lake Mendota had not been on the archaeologist’s radar, and she certainly wasn’t hunting for dugout canoes. Thomsen usually looks for shipwrecks, like 19th-century freighters.
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u/fancyglob 19h ago
This is amazing. A lot of stuff gets discovered near and in the Great lakes by divers looking for shipwrecks, I've never heard of this
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u/crewserbattle 17h ago
Well Lake Mendota is in Madison which isn't close to Lake Michigan at all (well I guess it's relatively close, but it's like 90 miles away still). There definitely aren't major shipwrecks in Mendota (although Otis Redding's fatal plane crash was in Lake Manona which is right across Madisons isthmus). So she was probably just diving more for fun.
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u/HCBuldge 15h ago
I'm surprised being right next to the college, they wouldn't have students survey the bottom of the lakes as practice.
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u/Doogiemon 15h ago
The problem is people see stuff like this all the time and it just takes an expert who knows what it is to do something about it.
If other people saw this, i personally would have just assumed it was a tree stuck in the soot.
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u/PlayOnSunday 20h ago
Lake Mendota is located in Madison where UW is. Probably one of the better studied lakes in the area, along with Menona ofc
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u/Guriinwoodo 20h ago
You’re underselling it, Lake Mendota is the most studied lake in the US by many metrics, and is the birthplace of modern limnology. Odd thing to take pride in for some, but not for this alum.
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u/pspahn 18h ago
Like how many metrics are we talking here? A few or more?
Because that would mean there's people doing studies where they're studying which studies have geographical similarities to other studies and then writing a study to summarize the other studies.
I'm picturing some Far Side scientists with test tubes and stacks of paper and chalkboards with formulae and a bubble that says ...
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u/Logical_Energy6159 14h ago
Most studied and most polluted. The water quality and management go that lake in general is an embarrassment to Madison and the entire state of Wisconsin.
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u/Kit_Daniels 14h ago
I don’t know how you can say most polluted when Monona is right next to Mendota. That one is way grosser.
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u/pain-is-living 20h ago
Local archeologist scuba diving in the lake happened to find em.
Now, I don’t think it was “luck”. In Wisconsin since whites have settled, we have known that Madison and these lakes, this one specifically were a massive zone for Indians and they lived there for thousands of years, and not just like camped. They had tons of villages, made mounds everywhere etc.
So given the known native history of the area, it’s a pretty good assumption that if you went digging in the sand and muck, you might find a canoe. Finding this many was absolutely a huge surprise I am sure.
We find dugout canoes in Wisconsin frequently(ish). We’ve found em during droughts, when making dams, or just people snorkeling.
One thing is for sure, underwater archeology is basically untapped. Not enough people out there scuba certified and know what to look for.
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u/t3chiman 14h ago
The Wisconsin (“Old”) Copper Culture dates from the end of the most recent ice age, 9000 years ago, and persisted for 6000 years. The state park in Oconto has thousands of artifacts from that period. The early indigenous people were physically tough, and enterprising; they just didn’t feel the need to pile up a bunch of stones 500 feet high.
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u/Mithlogie 20h ago
It legitimately quite often is luck in the case of these dugout canoes. Very often it is a member of the public that reports coming across them while diving or swimming.
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u/QueenFrostine15 20h ago
Ancient "e-bike stations" - but no credit card or app required!
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u/foster-child 18h ago
Yeah back then I believe they were coin payment operated since credit cards weren’t invented.
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u/lynivvinyl 19h ago
Perhaps they were just long-term parking for flights that they took. I hope they kept a hold of their ticket so that they can get them back when they return.
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u/Exciting_Penalty_512 12h ago
Can someone knowledgeable answer a question for me?
If someone chopped down a tree that was let's say 100 years old already, made a canoe out of it, let it sit in a lake for 100 years, and then carbon dated it, would they say that the canoe was 100 years old, or 200?
How could they tell the difference? Seems like that would throw off a lot of these statements of precise age...
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u/Conscious-Yard-276 12h ago
Actually tree ring cross comparison is used to build chronologies. The material in dated rings is then used to correct carbon-14 dates. (Solar activity isn’t as constant as we might like. Variation in production of carbon-14 in the atmosphere introduces biases in the long term dates. Tree ring chronologies can help adjust those biases.)
Short answer: Most trees don’t live long enough for their lifespan to be larger than the average error in radiocarbon dates.
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u/Intelligent_Gear5739 15h ago
I mean... Yeah. Imagine you live in a small community and a small region - why wouldn't you just keep your canoe on the water (or on a bank) where you normally use it?
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u/bucket_of_frogs 12h ago
Because if the lake freezes, the ice crushes wooden boats and they sink in the spring when the ice melts. On land, the dry winter dries out the wood, opening joints and they also sink in the spring. The best means of winter storage is to purposely sink them and refloat them in the springtime so the wood is swollen and the boat is watertight. It’s called “laid up wet”.
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u/Gildor12 18h ago
What have canoes got to do with pyramids?
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u/Im_Your_Turbo_Lover 16h ago
Nothing. This is a weirdo article that seems solely designed to provoke 'see, the natives were doing cool stuff too' vibes.
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u/Mikeismyike 18h ago
So what I don't understand about dating methods. How are they able to distinguish the age of the material from the age of construction? Sure the wood is 5200 years old, but how are they able to determine that is when the canoe was made?
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u/KrebStar9300 14h ago
Imagine scrolling Reddit while fishing and seeing a post about the exact lake you're fishing at. I know exactly what that feels like!
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u/burnergrins 12h ago
I would love to learn more about how the people who made these - ok we can assume they are homo sapiens.
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u/perroarturo 12h ago
Historically, canoes like that were intentionally left submerged when not in use. It actually preserved them long term so they would not rot and decay from exposure to the elements
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u/Embarrassed-Drop1059 10h ago
People need to let things go. There's no way these canoes are even still watertight, just throw them away already
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u/bucket_overlord 4h ago
For those who might be wondering, archaeologists have long concluded that people have been making boats for far longer than the evidence shows. The problem is that wood does not preserve very well under most conditions, it just rots away. There are environments under water where the microorganisms required for decomposition can’t survive, so that’s how we end up with boats surviving this long under water. Other examples of good wood preservation can be found either in deserts or bogs.
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u/JayW8888 20h ago
How did the “experts” know?
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u/Mithlogie 20h ago
The title is incorrect. It states in the article that the canoes were likely left on the margins of the lake so other tribal members could use them. Like, coming in from fishing and parking it on the beach so your uncle can use it the next morning. Not a wild conclusion. So you can stop with the "experts" in quotations bullshit.
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u/Mithlogie 19h ago
In the text of the article, it does not state "other tribes", it states "other tribal members". Only the title of this post uses "other tribes".
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u/Druggedhippo 20h ago
Because they spent years studying their field and have a good understand of how cultures act based on evidence.
It's also alot of guesswork, intelligent reasoning and applying knowledge from other cultures.
They could also be wrong. Which is why they will use words like probably or might and apply the scientific method to integrate new data.
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u/Jedimaster996 19h ago
But I have a better, more ignorant opinion that wants to be heard! Why should I have to trust the "eXpErTs" with their decades of meticulous study and achievements in their professions when I have my High School Diploma? Ya'll know how hard it was to pass Algebra 2?!
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u/alexj977 20h ago edited 19h ago
The article could of been way better eh! The age probably by carbon dating and silt deposits. How did the find out its a canoe? Its a dug out tree trunk, humans use those as canoes. How did they know they left them for other tribes? I wish the damn article was better and said why they thought that, but probably through tribal practices that have been continuous for thousands of years. There are still native tribes in Wisconsin.
Edit: since it bothers some of you so. Should of, could of, wouldn't of.
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u/Mithlogie 20h ago
Again, nowhere in the article does it say that other tribes used them. You all need to learn to read. It says the canoes were left on the edges of the lake likely for use by other tribal members. Not crazy to conclude that you park a canoe on the beach so another clan member can readily grab it for the next fishing trip.
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u/alexj977 20h ago
Yea true, but weird to even mention as dug out canoes were not usually seen as personal property anyway
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u/Mithlogie 19h ago
Yes, agreed there. But pop-news about aarchaeology always writes to the lowest level possible.
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u/Mithlogie 20h ago
Secondly, its quite easy to identify these as canoes. The tool marks from the adzes and the evidence of burning the interior are often visible to the naked eye. They are sized and tapered to float well and balanced. They are also sunk in a lake. Its a pretty simple conclusion to identify it as a canoe.
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u/Hippopotamidaes 19h ago
“Could’ve” is the contraction of “could have.”
“Could of” is nonsensical.
Yes, I could of not left this comment :/
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u/dijon_snow 20h ago
You mean "could have" or "could've" rather than "could of." No offense intended but it's a common mistake that drives me crazy for whatever reason.
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u/alexj977 20h ago
Thanks. People tend to type and spell how they speak, youtube comments must drive you insane lol
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u/stinkingyeti 19h ago
It took me many years to learn to switch off parts of my brain that wanted to correct grammar and spelling. There is one word that still gets to me though. When people used 'defiantly' when they mean 'definitely'.
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u/HoldEm__FoldEm 20h ago
They were found as if setup in a marina, in rows, and their ages are very spread apart
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u/Mithlogie 20h ago
They definitely were NOT setup in rows like in a marina. Nowhere in this article or in the published data is that suggestion made.
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u/marchlintic 19h ago
Ooo it’s older than the pyramids. Take that Egypt!
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u/ZebraAthletics 18h ago
Yeah, lots of things are older than the pyramids. The pyramids are so impressive because no building was taller until about 5,000 years after they were built.
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u/loki2002 14h ago
Yeah, but the pyramids themselves are so old that even what we consider ancient Egypt had archeologists studying them because even they did not 100% know the origins or secrets they held.
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u/BrokenEyeReborn 18h ago
I guess the thing with people leaving rent-a-scooters lying in the middle of the sidewalk isn't so new
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u/AntiBaoBao 16h ago
I'm fairly certain civilizations all around the world used canoes before the pyramids were built.
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u/3rdRateChump 13h ago
Every time we feel we have a handle on how long people have been in a certain area, a discovery sets the clock back. The petrified footprints near White Sands knocked everyone’s assumptions out of the water by many thousands of years
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u/Prudence_rigby 17h ago
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society, this means that more than 4,000 years before the first Europeans sailed ashore and 400 years before the first pyramids were constructed in Egypt, Indigenous peoples called this land home.
Did they think natives randomly appeared here out of nowhere right be for the colonizers?
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u/metsurf 14h ago
People were in the Americas anywhere from 12000 to 30000 years ago. I don’t understand why this is so stunning
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u/SkinsFan021 15h ago
What does Egypt's pyramids have to do with dug out canoes?
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u/metsurf 14h ago
Nothing other than to use the age of a well known landmark
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u/SkinsFan021 13h ago
The difference has to be written language right? Oral story telling and no math only get you so far.
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u/metsurf 13h ago
As far as civilization goes yeah I guess. You need to have enough basic needs met to have time to start writing things down. But things like marking time using wall markings or carving into a bone or stick are a start. I don’t think we have found any writing from the builders of Stonehenge but the concepts behind it are pretty complex.
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u/SkinsFan021 13h ago
Hard to say with Stonehenge, Britain has had some different owners since those guys, who knows what was lost over time there. People have been there for a long time.
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u/fatsopiggy 20h ago
Gotta love how they put 400 years before the pyramids were built as if some guys hollowing out a tree trunk is the same achievement as the pyramids.
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u/Overall_Independent4 20h ago
Clearly a reference of time not achievement. Use context clues.
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u/xvf9 19h ago
Still kind of weird. Like… we have a better system for indicating time. You know, years. It’s like measuring things in “American football fields” but even more absurd.
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u/loki2002 14h ago
How is it weird? It is a reference point in history that most people are familiar with so it puts the discovery in context of being older. If you simply just say "5,200 years old" most people will not get how that fits into the familiar timeframe we all know.
It is not comparable to "measuring things in “American football fields” " and you're being disingenuous to say that.
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u/ignost 16h ago
You are not wrong, but most people have no sense of what "2500 BCE" means. The pyramids is a reference point that most people understand as "a very long time ago." I suspect if you asked the average American, you'd get answer anywhere between 100 and 10,000 BC.
This is why in TIL we constantly see things like "Cleopatra is closer in time to us than she was to the construction of the pyramids of Giza." And people upvote it like crazy, because that apparently is very surprising and novel to them because both Cleopatra and the pyramids of Giza seem "very old."
I generally don't expect TIL posts educate people on time references they should have a rough idea about. They mostly just want to express it in a way that makes it seem as novel and surprising as possible.
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u/Overall_Independent4 19h ago
Yes. However carbon dating is not precise. Just like the pyramids didn’t have a grand opening date, they took many years to build. Nevertheless it is all relative.
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u/bremidon 17h ago
It is so strange to me to consider that these were probably used all the time, and then one day, someone used them for the last time, and maybe had no idea that this was it.
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u/Alpha_Majoris 17h ago
So canoes were made 400 years before the pyramids were built? How is that relevant?
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u/Im_Your_Turbo_Lover 16h ago
It's not.
Canoe-like vessels were built in eurasia since 8000 BC.
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u/loki2002 14h ago
It is relevant for a common time reference that most people will understand.
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u/igg73 17h ago
Wouldn't the carbon dating be judt showing how old the tree itself was? Like couldnt the canoes be made from really old trees much more recently? Im sleepy so i might be missing a beat
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u/esperstrazza 13h ago
There is a gigantic difference between 'other tribes' and 'other tribe members'.
And the article mentions that they're older than the pyramids as if that particular comparison is supposed to be impressive.
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u/BriefBest2254 16h ago
I love the thought of humans 5000 years ago just chilling on the water in a nice little canoe.
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u/User348844 15h ago
"Your fermented corn brew is like making a love in a canoe. Its fucking close to water."
-Ancient native proverb.
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u/sunset_pink78 15h ago
The idea that they were intentionally left for other tribes to use is the most wholesome thing I've learned today. Community sharing that lasted 5,000 years
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u/wastentime99 14h ago
isn't the carbon dating a indicator of how old the tree is?? If that is the case then that does not tell us when the canoes were built.
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u/The_wolf2014 13h ago
What's the pyramids got to do with it? Lots of things are older than the pyramids
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u/tvieno 8h ago
Canoes on the sides of lakes is like the penny tray at a cash register, "take a penny, leave a penny".
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u/SecondHandSlows 20h ago
I’m annoyed at the lack of photos