History of the Sea Kayak: A Legacy of Human Adventure
Tracing the History of the Kayak from Greenland back to early Human Migrations
In an old yellow fiberglass sea kayak just under 16 feet in length, I’ve paddled a couple hundred miles. I’m 26, in decent shape, and a strong paddler by most standards. A few rescues in rough seas, a couple of gnarly long crossings, countless nights living out of a boat— but I’ve never hunted out of one.
Built of whalebone or driftwood lashed together with sinew then covered with sea lion or seal skin, the Greenlandic qajaq and its paddler were and are a force to be reckoned with, tackling Arctic seas to hunt seals, sea lions, and even whales.
The first modern kayak is traced to qajaq in Greenland 3500 years ago and this is where our story begins; we are going to walk way, way back to the roots of the technology behind the sea kayak.
The Greenlandic Qajaq
Greenlandic hunters would build their own qajaqs, harvesting cedar driftwood washed ashore from rivers in Siberia and customizing their boat to their body, much like you might a pair of pants. It makes sense that the hunter would want to build their own boat— the Arctic water is cold; they’d want seams guaranteed to be waterproofed and boat balanced in a way that responds to their body. Most hunting from a kayak was done with a thrown harpoon or spear, making balance even more imperative.
A sea lion in the Pacific.
The Thule Inuit (“Too-lee”) came from Northwest Canada and Alaska via Baffin and Ellesmere Island to Greenland approximately 2000 years ago. It’s theorized that as populations in Alaska grew the Thule began an eastward migration. A global warming period freed the previously iced-in Arctic for travel via boats, with the qajaq for hunting, and the much larger but similarly constructed umiak for relocating whole villages. The Thule Inuit brought with them a “sophisticated maritime hunting culture that had developed in the rich waters of the Bering Sea” (Canadian Museum of History).
Around 980 CE in Greenland, the same warming period that allowed the Thule Inuit to paddle Arctic waters led the Norse people reach and establish small farming settlements in southern Greenland’s protected fjords. Contact with the Thule included both peaceful trade and conflict; the climate cooled as the earth entered the little ice age around 1350 CE and the Norse either abandoned Greenland or died. As the climate cooled, the Thule Greenlanders were pushed south by increasing sea ice. Greenlandic oral history, woodworking techniques, and modern genetics indicate that a few of the Norse settlers became integrated into Greenlandic culture.
Today, most of the 57,000 people of Greenland are descendants of the Thule Greelanders and the tradition of the qajaq is alive and well with yearly international rolling competitions. In Qaanaaq, Greenland in the far northwest, traditions like narwhal hunting persist, under the requirement that they take place traditionally, from a skin on frame qajaq with a hand-thrown spear.
The Greelandic qajaq is the most similar in design to our modern, fiberglass kayaks in length, hull design, albeit not in materials, and bares almost no resemblance to a recreational kayak.
The Aleutian Iqyax (Baidarka)
The the migration of the Thule Inuit from what is now Alaska indicates that though while modern sea kayak and qajaq technology can be traced directly to the frigid Greenlandic waters, the roots of the kayak might be much, much older and way out west, with the origin of the migration itself.
At the edge of modern Alaska lies a volcanic archipelago— rugged islands guarded by massive crossings upwards of 40 miles, tide rips, and some of the stormiest seas on the planet1. The Unangax, the Indigenous People of the Aleutian Islands, have called the Aleutian chain home for at least 10,000 years, harvesting food from the sea and hunting with spears from skin on frame boats, much like the Greenlanders.
Today the Unangax are just a fraction of the seafaring empire they once were. In the 1700s, Russian colonization of the Aleutians and the area now known as Alaska lead to an initial wipeout of the population by about 80% due to diseases, forced labor, and violence.
Today, while much of Unangax culture has been lost to acts that constitute genocide by the Russian and United States Governments, several Unangax communities remain in the Aleutian Islands and throughout Alaska. While many Unangax in the Aleutian Islands still practice subsistence living and hunting, it’s unlikely to see anyone hunting with spears from skin on frame boats.
Modern sea kayak in the British Columbia fjords
When Russian explorers first met with the Unangax, that was not the case. Reports from early European travelers tell of the baidarka, or iqyax in Unangam Tunum language, and its paddlers— a skin-on-frame kayak with a forked bow in which Unangax paddlers reportedly could sustain speeds of 10 knots. For reference, in a modern kayak I can sustain speeds of three knots, four in the right conditions, to cover 25 miles in a full day of paddling; a Unangax paddler could likely have covered at least triple that distance with that speed.
The iqyax, like the qajaq, is made of seal or sea lion skin over driftwood or whaleboat, lashed together by sinew to make for a more flexible boat. The flex allows the boat to conform to waves much like modern folding kayaks, potentially lending to a speed advantage in rough water. Christopher Cunningham, a modern iqyax paddler/boat builder, reports in Small Boats Monthly that he could reach speeds of seven knots in his homemade iqyax, and theorizes that the speed may be associated with the flex in the boat and it’s capacity for controlled surfing in following seas.
Unlike the qajaq, the iqyax was sometimes designed to seat multiple paddlers similar to a tandem sea kayak, while the traditional Greenlandic qajaq was designed not only to hold one paddler but to be custom fit to only one person.
Also unlike the qajaq, the iqyax has a distinctive forked bow. Once thought to be decorative, the bifurcated bow is now thought to add speed as well and stabilize the boat, suggesting Aleutian boat-building technology to be in fact more advanced than that of the modern sea kayaks we see today— which does indeed make sense.
Generation after generation, Unangax boat builders and hunters depended on their boats for survival. An expert Unangax boat builder would have spent far more time learning techniques from his predecessors, with far more incentive to build the most sea-worthy boat possible—the open North Pacific is unforgiving, and their food, clothing, and resources all came from the sea.
Unangax oral tradition indicates that the iqyax has in fact been part of Unangax culture since time immemorial. One Unangax story tells of two young paddlers who set out in baidarkas to find the edge of the earth— when they came back they were old, and had never found the edge.
Crossing the Bering Strait
Ten times in the last 800,000 years, lower sea levels exposed Beringia, the land bridge connecting Siberia to Alaska. The Bering Land Bridge theory, one of leading theories on human migration to North America posits that 15,000 years ago, humans followed herds of animals across the Bering Land Bridge in several migrations, then moving on in waves to populate the North American Continent2.
Genetic evidence suggests there were three migrations from Siberia, with the first and largest occurring 15,000 years ago. Evidence from the same study also indicates that the Siberian Yupik people in modern day Russian, Indigenous People of the Chukotka/Chukchi Peninsula in Russia, carry “First American DNA”, indicating back-migrations across the Bering Strait.
Today, Siberian Yupik and Alaskan Yup’ik Indigenous people live on both sides of the Bering Strait on the Chukota and Seward Peninsulas both, separated by two 20-mile crossings and a stopover at the Diomede Islands, a culture split in two not by the sea but by the Iron Curtain. Before the Yupik were splintered by modern borders and lines on maps, they traversed the Bering Sea freely, with families on the Alaska side visiting cousins on the Siberian side. An understanding of the interlinked culture, the same culture, on both sides of the Bering Strait makes the “First American DNA” found in Siberian Yupik people seem obvious— no matter the sea level, the 50 miles separating Siberia from Alaska is simply not that far; it is a distance that in an advanced boat like a iqyax could be traversed easily in a day, especially with Diomede islands as a perfect halfway stopping point. 3
It’s here that at least 10,000 years ago, hidden in the cold waters of the Bering Strait and who may have crossed it, questions of iqyax, qajaqs, and our modern understanding of human migration and Indigenous technology boil.
Ancient Mariners and the Kennewick Man
“From our oral histories we know our people have been part of this land since the beginning of time. We do not believe that our people migrated here from another continent as the scientists do.” These are the words of Armand Minthorn, a representative for the Umatilla Tribe in Washington, written in 1996 in regard to efforts to study the body of the Kennewick Man, well-preserved human remains found in the Columbia River.
The Kennewick Man was dated to 9,500 years ago, and bares a notable resemblance to the Ainu Indigenous people of Japan, raising questions among scientists and anthropologists— could the Kennewick Man be an ancient traveller, a human clue to migrations to the American continent and the sorts of technology and travel that existed in that time?
After a contentious court case between the Umatilla Tribe, who wanted to bury the Kennewick Man with respect as an ancestor, and groups of scientists who wanted to study the body, knowing that this might be one of the last good chances to understand our past, it was decided that the body could be studied, as the Kennewick Man had no relations to any living tribe.
Through the Kennewick Man’s teeth and the chemical signature in his bones, it was found that he ate marine life and drank glacial meltwater, though he was found inland in Washington State, far from the nearest glaciers in Alaska. The shape of his skill and bones indicate the Kennewick Man had genetic similarities to both Moriori People of the Chatham Islands and the Indigenous Ainu of Japan, both perhaps descendants of the Jomon culture in Japan.
Douglas Owsley, physical anthropologist and one of the researchers who worked with the Kennewick Man, believes the the Kennewick Man belonged to “an ancient population of seafarers who were America’s original settlers”4.
Very little is known about any group of ancient travelers, only disjointed pieces of evidence that indicate this kind of travel probably happened; the Kennewick Man perhaps points to roots in the Jomon culture. Beginning some 16,000 years ago, the Jomon culture coexisted with the Bering Land Bridge. The Jomon sewed planks of wood together to make sea worthy boats, a technique not dissimilar to the lashing of driftwood or whalebone with sinew found in Greenlandic an Aleutian kayaks.
While overwhelmingly genetic evidence still indicates three large migrations from Siberia to the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge resulted in the populating of North America, more and more evidence points to other, smaller migrations and more interconnected travel around the Arctic and Pacific than previously thought, many distinctly tied to advanced maritime technology— namely, skin-on-frame boats suited for cold water travel and hunting.
Recent genetic evidence revealed that the Dorset culture of Greenland, the predecessors to the Thule Inuit migrated from Siberia approximately 4,500 years ago; this same culture then persisted in the Greenlandic Arctic in isolation until they met with the Thule Inuit culture and eventually disappeared.
Genetics research on a skeleton discovered near Lake Baikal in Russia compared with modern Indigenous Americans indicated that Indigenous Americans diverged genetically from their ancestors in Asia about 25,000 years ago. Archeological evidence suggests that northeast Siberia was home to humans 30,000 years ago, before the peak of the last ice age and this genetic divergence, but there is no archeological evidence of humans in Alaska or Northern Canada until 15,000 years ago, begging the question of where the genetic ancestors of modern Indigenous Americans were after this genetic split but before the archeological record resumes. John Hoffecker, Dennis O’Rourke, and Scott A. Elias posit that these first Indigenous Americans may have lived on the Bering Land Bridge itself, which at the time may have been 600 miles wide, in a Science Magazine article published in 2014.
Archaeological evidence from even farther back supports that humans might have been accomplished seafarers and travelers far earlier than previously thought. Wendy Zukerman reports in a 2011 article that 42,000 years ago humans in East Timor had fully formed deep sea fishing skills as indicated by archeological record of Tuna Fishing. Zukerman is also quick to point out that evidence indicates that after leaving Africa, it took humans 30,000 years to reach Europe overland, but only 20,000 to reach Australia by sea, traveling along coasts. This alone hints at some sort of ocean-going maritime technology.
With all of this, the idea that the Kennewick Man travelled at least from Alaska to Washington, and perhaps is descended from people who travelled from Japan isn’t so unbelievable; the Yupik have traversed the Bering Strait for generations by sea and continue to do so. Tens of thousands of years ago, humans were deep sea fishing. A 2017 study indicates that our complex human brain networks evolved around 1.8 million years ago; a human in the present day has no cognitive advantage over a human in the time of the Kennewick Man.
Orcas in the Pacific
The Long and Storied History of Human Adventure
In 1999 and 2000, explorer Jon Turk, whom I had the pleasure of watching speak at the Grand Marais North House Folk School’s Winterer’s Gathering, paddled from Japan to Alaska with similar technology that would have been available to a mariner 10,000 years ago, investigating what exactly a stone age mariner would have faced— a difficult, but not impossible, journey.
Modern sea kayaking legend Freya Hoffmeister has circumnavigated Iceland, New Zealand, Australia, South America, and is currently chipping away at North America.
This past summer, a few friends and I lived out of a kayaks on the British Columbia Coast, exploring islands and fjords. While our food was dried, not hunted, and we used GPS technology, much of the technology from our sea kayaks to spray skirts were in some way modeled after Indigenous/hunter-gatherer technology. Two autumns ago, we paddled a 18-mile open water crossing, roughly the same distance separating Russia and Alaska from the Diomede Islands on either side. While by today’s standards we are good paddlers, we would almost certainly be no match for a Unangax, Jomon, or Thule Inuit paddler living in the prehistoric wild in a custom built boat.
Clues to the depth of early maritime technology can be found in the genetic record, archeological record, oral tradition, and in the accomplishments of modern paddlers using that same, ancient technology. Individual adventurers and small exploration groups are of course, a different story that that of the three large migrations to the Americas found in genetic record, but stories like that of the Kennewick Man, the Yupik people continuing to cross the Bering Strait throughout the centuries, and the formidable Unangax ikyax and Greenlandic qajaq paddlers do offer important clues into the story of human history:
We have historically underestimated the technologies of Indigenous People, and in doing so, misunderstood the legacy of human exploration, migration, and adventure.
“Kayaking the Aleutians” adventure documentary by Cackle TV follows Justine Curgenven and Sarah Outen’s sea kayaking expedition of the Aleutian chain, a 2,500 km (1,553 mile) undertaking. This is a fantastic film documenting one of the most intense unsupported human-powered expeditions probably ever, and was one of the primary inspirations for this article.
Treasures of Alaska: The Last Great American Wilderness by Jeff Rennicke, Lake Superior based writer and photographer, beautifully details the story of the Yupik people on both sides of the Bering Sea. (p 126-140).
Treasures of Alaska: The Last Great American Wilderness by Jeff Rennicke, (p 126-140).
“The Kennewick Man Finally Freed to Share His Secrets” by Douglas Preston is an enthralling read into both the implications of the Kennewick Man findings and what it took to reach those conclusions. I just barely scratched the surface of the story of the Kennewick Man, and I highly recommend reading the full article.