The Canoe and The Paddler(s) PART I

Fisherman on the Niger River (Source - http://harvestheart.tumblr.com/post/24663741976)

The canoe is an important cultural symbol, occupational tool and mode of transportation from rural to peri-urban communities in Nigeria especially those which are coastal in nature or that are close to the waterways.  

Out of the 36 states which make up the Nigerian federation, whether in the north, south, east or west, there are only a handful in which the canoe is not utilised for transportation, for artisanal fishing, for haulage, for socialising, and for sport / recreation. In some places school children cannot even go to school without the canoe which is the only mode of transport available so they call the canoe, "the water bus". In essence, the canoe is vital to the economy, livelihoods and way of life of certain Nigerian communities and thus a permanent fixture and feature in those places.

A Nigerian canoe is traditionally a lightweight boat, made as a dugout from a hollowed tree trunk, propelled by one or more seated or standing paddler using a single-blade or double-blade paddle or one long pole for punting. In the photograph above the paddlers are using both the long pole and the single blade paddle.

Dugouts are paddled across deep lakes and rivers or punted through channels in swamps or in shallow areas. Many folks have the same combination for movements in both shallow and deeper waters.

The canoe has a long history in Nigeria.

The Dufuna canoe was discovered by a Fulani herdsman in the month of May, 1987, near the village of Dufuna in Fune Local Government Area of Yobe State, not far from the Komadugu Gana River. 

Dafuna canoe found by a Fulani herdsman while digging a well

Understandably this was one of the most significant archaeological finds ever in Nigeria. The news frenzy and sheer excitement all over the world which followed the discovery was inevitable.

The laboratory results which the crop of experts which were assembled to authenticate the finding could not help but redefine the pre-history of African water transport, ranking the Dufuna canoe as the world's third oldest known dugout. The other ones older than it are the dugouts from Pesse, Netherlands and Noyen-sur-Seine, France. As a matter of fact the emanating evidence of an 8000-year-old 'tradition' of boat building in Africa appeared to set aside the assumption that maritime transport developed much later in Africa than in Europe.

Various sources have documented the history and timeline of this huge discovery. 

As some of the protagonists of the time opined, one of the great benefits of the discovery was that it helped archaeologists draw a relationship between what was happening in Nigeria and else where in the world during that period. Indications were that while Nigerians were making canoes in Dufuna village in 6000 BC, the people of Catol Huyuk in Turkey were making pottery, textiles, etc, like people of Mesopotamia (in present day Iraq) were forming urban communities and the Chinese were making painted pottery in the Yang Shao region. Archaeologists suddenly gathered irrefutable proof that some form of advanced civilisation existed in the Lake Chad Basin around 6000 BC.

Man punting a canoe in northern Nigeria. Courtesy of Irene Becker

The researchers who recorded events at the time  remarked that Peter Breunig of the University of Frankfurt, Germany, an archaeologist involved in the project said that the canoe's age "forces a reconsideration of Africa's role in the history of water. It shows that the cultural history of Africa was not determined by Near Eastern and European influences but took its own, in many cases parallel, course."

Documentation has shown that based on the minimal available technology during this period the making of the Dufuna canoe must have been a ponderous task which called for mastery, specialisation and ingenuity. A lot of man hours and skill must also have been put into the production since no iron tools were in existence at the time. There is the thinking that the tools used were probably Post Pleistocene ungrounded core axe - like and pick - axe bi-facial tools of microlithic appearance. It can also be assumed that the canoe was made near a river to eliminate the difficulty of transporting it over long distances.

People of Makoko (Lagos) fully depended on the canoe (AP-Sunday Alamba-Dailymail.co.uk)

Now that all the hoopla has died down, can we now ask some thoughtful and clear-mined questions?

Now this writer would ask some questions purely from the CREATIVITY and INNOVATION perspective.

If 8000 years ago Nigerians had the capacity to build dugouts for water transportation, with mastery, specialisation and ingenuity, what happened to that same mastery, specialisation and ingenuity that it simply stopped evolving or remained static?

For 8000 years how come no single innovation has been added to the 'traditional' canoe?

Why has none of millions of users of the canoe taken the initiative to innovate on the canoe? 

Reference:

P. Breunig, The 8000-year-old dugout canoe from Dufuna (NE), G. Pwiti and R. Soper (eds), Aspects of African Archaeology. Papers from the 10th Congress of the PanAfrican Association for Prehistory and related Studies. University of Zimbabwe Publications (Harare 1996) 461 - 468 ISBN: 0908307551.