Some early man may have got the idea of a boat in this way: Standing on the edge of a river, he saw signs of good hunting on the other side. A log from a dead tree floated by. Perhaps, he thought, he could ride on the log. Perhaps if he kicked his feet he could steer the log across the river. He tried out his idea and it worked.
We can at least be fairly sure that men learned to ride on logs before they built anything for traveling on water. Once people had the idea of riding on logs it was an easy step to tie several logs together with vines or strips of skin. In this way rafts began. It must have been an easy step, too, to hollow out a log and ride in it instead of on it. No one knows where such a boat was first made or who made it.
Even today there are boats that are just hollowed-out logs. They are called dugouts.
People often wanted boats in places where they could not get logs. They learned to make them of other things. Skin and reeds are two materials that many different peoples used. A boat made of skin or reeds has to be coated with something that will make it waterproof.
At the same time that our early ancestors were learning how to make boats, they were discovering ways of pushing them along. They found out that they could push them with poles or oars or paddles. They learned how to make the wind help them. They invented sails.
When we say that anything is boat-shaped, we mean that it is shaped like this: () But many boats are not this shape at all. Some are pointed at one end and flat at the other. Some are round.
On our rivers and lakes and seas today there are swarms of boats. Some of them are used just for fun. But many of them are very useful ways of traveling. Some boats of today are even the homes of the people who own them. We call these houseboats. We still have boats with paddles and boats with sails. And now we have boats with motors, too. After men had learned to make small boats, they learned to make big boats, or ships. But the story of ships is another story.
