MAN FROM THE FARTHEST PAST 
had invented any form of canoe. It is true that they have 
left us drawings of various water-dwelling creatures, like 
the seal, the salmon, and the eel; but these are all such as 
could readily be speared from dry land or perhaps in some 
cases through the ice. 
But in this Middle Stone Age, again, we find clear proofs 
that man was learning how to support himself and control 
his movements on the water. No doubt he could always 
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Fic. 68. Tasmanian “canoe” made of rolls of bark lashed together. After 
Ling Roth 
swim; but hitherto he had been essentially a land dweller. 
Thus his conquest of the water was a step as momentous 
in its way as the conquest of the air is to us nowadays. 
As with all the basic discoveries, we can only surmise 
the course of this one. Flood waters must often have 
carried off the camps of hunters and fishermen. The same 
floods undermined and floated away trees. His instinctive 
clutching of these would soon show early man that they 
could keep him from drowning, and even carry him with 
them for long distances. By pushing with a stick or spear 
in shallow water or by striking out with his hands and 
feet where it was deeper, he would learn that he could, in 
a measure, control their movements. Thus the idea of 
floats must have arisen. In time man learned to con- 
struct these for himself out of bundles of buoyant reeds, 
rolls of bark, and even tree trunks laid side by side and 
lashed together. Examples of the former have occurred 
in recent times among some of the more backward races, 
such as the now extinct Tasmanians; while the shores of the 
Baltic Sea have yielded traces of a raft big enough to sup- 
port a floating village and implying a long previous period 
of development. 
[ 240 ] 
