25 Most Significant Inventions In Human History

As land-dwelling creatures, humans were once limited by the physical boundaries between land and sea. However, our creativity has never known any limits, and not even the inhospitable saltwater oceans could limit humanity’s curiosity and desire for exploration.

Our earliest ancestors started off with dugout canoes, carving out hollow tree trunks and using them to travel across water using simple oars. From there the early Egyptians developed sails and harnessed the wind to transport them across large bodies of water. Over the centuries, sail-based ships would keep getting larger and more imposing, until the steamship and the construction of metal ships changed water-based navigation forever.

Regardless of shape and size, ships had a monumental impact on human behaviour. No longer were humans limited to one geographic area, and exploration reached new heights. Without ships, explorers like Leif Erikson and Christopher Columbus wouldn’t have discovered the North American continent, and thousands of explorers and curious traders would have to rely on land transport to reach far away destinations. Spain, France and especially the United Kingdom would never have become the empires that dominated so much of the world if their navies and their abilities to move about over water weren’t so sophisticated.

Indeed, human history would’ve been vastly different if our ancestors never built the first boats or set sail over open water.