The boat was found by underwater explorers from the Triglav association, who had permission from the chief provincial conservation officer to conduct searches in the vicinity of the ruins of a granary that supplied the Modlin Fortress near the confluence of Vistula and Narew rivers, north of Warsaw. The fortress dates back to Napoleonic times, was significantly expanded in the 19th century under the Russian Empire, and was besieged by Germans in September 1939, making it an important historical monument.
Sławomir Kaliński, head of the Triglav association, notified archeologist Robert Wyrostkiewicz to assess the find.
The boat was located at a depth of just 80 centimeters. After confirming that it was not simply a log, Wyrostkiewicz measured it and found that it had a width of 80 centimeters and a length of 7.8 meters.
The dugout canoe was made of a hard type of wood, possibly an oak. It is not a complete specimen, as its bow is missing.
Nevertheless, Wyrostkiewicz told the state news agency PAP that it is quite big for a dugout, as such a type of boat, made for two rowers, was usually between two and three, and no more than four meters in length.
At the same time, the archeologist stressed the boat’s fine craftsmanship.
“The boat builder was rather skilled. At the stern one can observe a rectangular cavity made by a human hand, perhaps where the steering mechanism was installed,” he said.
Robert Wyrostkiewicz said that dugouts are the oldest forms of boats built by humans, with the first ones made in the Neolithic period. They are made of a single, hollowed-out tree trunk.
The oldest dugout canoe was discovered in the Netherlands in 1955 and was carbon-dated to between 8,000 and 7,500 BCE.
The simple construction of the dugout means that it was used all over the world before the advent of more advanced boat-building techniques, and even after that. Slavs used dugouts during their military campaigns more than 1,000 years ago, and as the archeologist said, these tended to be larger than usual for this type of boat.
“Perhaps the specimen that was now discovered is older, but it could just as well have been made in the 19th century. Considering the level of damage, I would estimate its age at 200 to 300 years, meaning it can date back to royal [i.e. pre-partitions of Poland - TVP World] times,” he said.
In Poland, dugouts were built until as late as the 1930s, in Polesia, a marshy region that now stretches on both sides of the Belarusian-Ukrainian border with a small section a part of eastern Poland.
He said that a more precise dating of the boat would be possible after dendrochronological studies on it can be conducted.
Dentrochnronoly uses tree rings to assess not only the age of the tree but also the thickness of the rings can be used to determine the time at which the tree was alive by cross-referencing it with available climatological data.
The boat will be passed to a museum, once one that can undertake proper conservation efforts is found. For the time being, the boat has been moved to a different place several hundred meters from where it was found and weighted down with stones.
“Water will ensure relatively anaerobic [without oxygen] conditions, which will conserve the boat until further research. The stones will ensure that it does not float away somewhere further off, which has sometimes happened with earlier similar finds,” Wyrostkiewicz said.
