The first canoes were carved from stone. They weren’t particularly effective and the first functional canoes would’ve been invented a lot sooner if the years devoted to carving that one stone canoe were spent paying closer attention to which materials were actually buoyant. The wooden canoe inventors were quite bitter. In fact, even up into present day, all canoes—wooden and fiberglass alike—have on them symbols from ancient Sanskrit that translate to “I should’ve been first.”
