Dugout canoe

boat made from a hollowed tree trunk

A dugout canoe, or dugout is a boat that is made by hollowing out a tree. The name is sometimes shortened to dugout. Other names for this kind of boat are logboat and monoxylon. Monoxylon (μονόξυλον) (pl: monoxyla) is Greek – mono- (single) + ξύλον xylon (tree) – and is mostly used in classic Greek texts. In German, they are called Einbaum ("one tree" in English). Some, but not all, pirogues are also made in this manner.

Dugouts on the shore of Lake Malawi

Dugouts are the oldest boat type archaeologists have found. The items found date back about 8,000 years to the Neolithic Stone Age. This is probably because they are made of massive pieces of wood, which tend to preserve better than others, such as bark canoes.

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The Pesse canoe is the world's oldest known dugout
 
Slavic dugout from the 10th century
 
Ukrainian dugout (dowbanka) from the end of the 19th century
 
Building a dugout in Estonia

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