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Quest for ancient sailors' skills

Heyerdahl's voyages inspired the Abora project

LARNACA, Cyprus -- A German-led team is attempting to prove that prehistoric mariners sailed the high seas, linking ancient civilizations.

Inspired by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl, the Abora project is using a Bolivian-made reed boat to sail more than 450 nautical miles between Egypt, Lebanon and Cyprus.

German biologist Dominique Goerlitz and his team are attempting to prove that there were no boundaries to the travels of ancient seafarers, in contrast to conventional theories of limited navigational capabilities.

Historians have long puzzled over whether the Mediterranean peoples ventured beyond the Straits of Gibraltar to the New World thousands of years ago, and back.

A belief that prehistoric man could have travelled only in the direction of the currents defies the realities of the Mediterranean, which has continuously changing winds, Goerlitz said.

"They wouldn't have been able to sail just with the currents and this is what we are investigating," Goerlitz told Reuters.

Unlike other seas, it is impossible to drift on the currents in the Mediterranean because of the continuously changing winds. But the Abora 2 has shown that reed boats can travel across the breeze at angles of up to 85 degrees.

"This is very important in the Mediterranean because it is not possible to get from one point to the other simply by drifting, the wind currents are very strong and change all the time," said crew member Connie Lorenz.

Their experiment appears to debunk a theory that sailors in antiquity never ventured into open seas or travelled long distances.

The comparative lightness of the boat -- it is six tonnes -- combined with the strong sea currents would make it dangerous for any mariner to venture too close to coastlines from the risk of running aground.

Goerlitz does not underestimate prehistoric man's capabilities.

"We are not much more intelligent than our ancestors. I think it is ridiculous to presume that mankind, being here for millions of years, only started getting clever about 5,000 years ago," said Goerlitz.

Built by the Aymara Indians of Bolivia, the Abora 2 is basically a raft of reed rods 11.8 metres (38 ft eight inches) long, 3.5 metres (11 feet six inches) wide and 1.5 metres (four feet 11 inches) high. It is held together by rope.

With a completely flat deck made with small planks of wood, two sleeping cabins and an open air compact kitchen, it has no railings. Two large wooden oars, or "swords" on either side of the stern are used to navigate.

It is a replica of boats depicted in prehistoric rock paintings found in Egypt, Mesopotamia and the Canary Islands, and similar to those still used by the Aymara Indians on Bolivia's Lake Titicaca.

Heyerdahl, by sailing from South America to Polynesia on the Kon-Tiki balsa raft in 1947, first proved that prehistoric man sailed the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on board flimsy craft.

In 1970 he crossed the Atlantic from Morocco to the West Indies on the reed boat Ra 11 to show that ancient Egyptians might have got to America long before the Vikings and Columbus.