According to the video "Amphibious Man" by Ivar Silis, kayak were brought into the American continent by groups coming from Asia. Its use then extended throughout the Artic all the way to Greenland. The same video says that the history of the kayak goes back 4000 years. Some people in Japan think that the kayak have its origins in Japan, and they might be right. But then it would not surprise me if the people from Tahiti started to claim that they brought the kayaks to Japan, and so on so forth. They have as much evidence as those who claim that they were the Irish who taught the Greenlanders how to build skin boats, and then the use of kayaks expanded to the West. One important thing to notice though, is that the statement "that is the way the Greenlanders paddled" is gramatically wrong because it should be in present tense--traditional kayak hunting is still alive and widely practiced in Greenland. Whether the Greenland Kayak League will allow foreigners to participate, and even compete, in the art of traditional Greenland kayaking is to be decided. - Julio Dan wrote: > design was so similar. Could there have been communication spanning such a > wide area, or did the designs, as we have evidence of them today evolve and > merge as a result of ceturies of drifting? > Any guesses as to how long the kayak in some form has been around? > Curious Dan *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Tue Oct 19 1999 - 16:57:03 PDT
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