Outrigger canoe and crab-claw sail
Canoa de balancín y vela de pinza de cangrejo
- Date
- c. 1500 BCE · confidence low
- Place
- Island Southeast Asia, Philippines
- Credited to
- Austronesian peoples
- Field
- Movement
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A canoe stabilised by one or two outriggers and propelled by a highly efficient inverted-triangular crab-claw sail that sails close to the wind. It enabled the greatest prehistoric maritime expansion, from Madagascar to Easter Island.
Neither the outrigger nor the crab-claw sail survive from prehistoric times; their antiquity is inferred from Austronesian linguistics (reconstructed terms) and from the expansion itself. The place of origin is uncertain (the Philippines, Taiwan or eastern Indonesia).
What it led to
- the Austronesian expansion across Indonesia, Oceania and Madagascar
- the Polynesian double-hulled ocean-going canoe
- maritime trade in Southeast Asia