The dugout canoe – THE boat of prehistoric times

**Monday, August 10 to Sunday, August 16, 2026** A tall, wide tree trunk, a few stone or bronze axes, and a strong team—that's all it took to build a boat in the pile-dwelling era! Such wooden boats, also known as "dugouts" because of their raw material, are among the oldest watercraft known to mankind. They can be reliably traced back to at least 10,000 years before our time, in the so-called Mesolithic period. They made it possible to navigate the rivers and lakes of Europe, catch fish, and transport goods safely over long distances. No wonder, then, that dugouts continued to be of great importance in the subsequent Neolithic and Bronze Ages until 850 BC. Numerous finds in pile dwellings in and around Lake Constance prove this. Thanks to the fantastic preservation of wood in the prehistoric pile dwellings, experimental archaeologists such as Wolfgang Lobisser and Erik Häußler are still able to build dugout canoes today as they were over 3,000 years ago. Witness how a prehistoric wooden boat over 10 m long is being built in the pile dwellings of Unteruhldingen! Tip: In the DISCOVERY TRAIL, you can try out the tools needed to build a dugout canoe.