Hand-sewn boat, 12 meters long and 3,000 years old, discovered near a beach in Croatia

It is an exceptional wreck that is about to come out of the water, at the beginning of July, under the eyes of a team of French and Croatian researchers. This boat, which a first carbon-14 dating has placed between the end of the 12th^e century BC. J.-C. and the end of the X^e century BC. AD, is by far the oldest example of a fully sewn ship in the Mediterranean. Certainly, there were boats sewn on the Nile several centuries earlier, “but that has nothing to do with this technique which developed independently in the Mediterranean”, specifies Giulia Boetto (CNRS), who directs the research program “Adriboats, ships and navigation in the Eastern Adriatic in Antiquity”. This wreck, discovered in 2008 at a depth of 2 meters, 600 meters from a tourist beach in northern Croatia, will be the subject of an ambitious research and rescue program.

It all started with a fisherman from the bay of Zambratija who had long since spotted what he took to be the remains of a contemporary boat. Until a friend of his brings two archaeologists from the local museum to show them a nearby underwater site… and they take the opportunity to go and see this piece of wood protruding from the sand. At the sight of the characteristic small holes in the planks, they immediately thought of a boat whose planks of the hull were sewn together as in antiquity.

Pre-Roman period

The biggest surprise came from the dating of the wreck, carried out at the end of two campaigns, in 2011 and 2013, from four samples, while this type of shipbuilding was considered to be the prerogative of Imperial Roman times in the Gulf of Venice. This boat, more than 12 meters long, now completely cleared, clearly still has things to teach the scientists of the Camille-Jullian Center (CNRS-Aix-Marseille University) and the Archaeological Museum of Istria (Pula, Croatia) .

Refining its dating would shed light on this pre-Roman period during which the people occupying Istria, the Liburnians, had made themselves, according to later accounts, a reputation as pirates. And finding fibers on this elm wood would give indications on the nature of the bindings and on the way in which the watertightness of the hull was ensured.

Another mystery that intrigues Giulia Boetto, the central plank. “This hollowed-out piece, which acts as a keel, is of course reminiscent of the very old techniques of dugout boats”, that is to say carved from a tree trunk, underlines the researcher. The Zambratija boat would thus be the derivative of a canoe. Its occupants were paddling.