Sailboat

I am just starting to learn how to sail and therefore was very excited to find out that sailboats are actually a Greek invention. It makes sense if you think about it for a while - Greece has thousands of islands and the only way in ancient times to get from one to the other was over the ocean. Some people might even say that sailboats were invented on Chios because the inhabitants of the island saw the Turkish mainland and wanted to get there but swimming was almost impossible. However, I'm not entirely sure if this is true.

What did people need sailboats for? Of course, they wanted to trade their food and communicate with the other Greeks. Another reason was that they needed some kind of vehicle to get out in the ocean to fish. 

The first sailboats were pretty simple. The Greeks just cut trees into planks. Then they shaped and joined them to make the body of the boat. By the way, this design is still the basis of every sailboat. The sails the Greeks used were made out of simple cloth and they were square. This invention was really clever but also had some disadvantages: it only carried a limited amount of people and goods and they were very dependent on the wind. They could only use the boats when the wind came from the right direction.

Well, I'm glad that sailboats have improved since then and that we're not as dependent on the wind as the old Greeks were. But wait, was it really the Greeks that invented the sailboat or was it some different civilization? If you want to find out, check out the solution on our website!