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A boat is a watercraft of modest size designed to float or plane on water, and provide transport over it. Usually this water will be inland (lakes) or in protected coastal areas. However, boats such as the whaleboat were designed to be operated from a ship in an offshore environment. In naval terms, a boat is something small enough to be carried aboard another vessel (a ship). Some boats too large for the naval definition include the Great Lakes freighter, riverboat, narrowboat and ferryboat. Modern submarines can also be called boats, despite their underwater capabilities and size. This may be because the first submarines could be carried by a ship and were not capable of making independent offshore passages. Boats may be used by the military or other government interests, or for research or commercial purposes; but regardless of size, a vessel in private, non-commercial usage is almost certainly a boat. Boats have served as a method for short distance transportation since early times, on slow rivers and calm seas.[1] Circumstantial evidence, such as the early settlement of Australia over 40,000 years ago, suggests that boats have been used since very ancient times. The earliest boats have been predicted[2] to be logboats, or possibly boats made from hide or tree bark. The oldest boats to be found by archaeological excavation are logboats from around 7000-9,000 years ago,[3] [4] though a 7000 year-old seagoing boat made from reeds and tar has been found in Kuwait.[5] Being more capacious than carts and wagons, and suitable for both slow rivers and calm seas, boats were used between 4000BCE-3000BCE in Sumer,[1] ancient Egypt[6] and in the Indian Ocean.[1] Boats played an important part in the commerce between the Indus Valley Civilization and Mesopotamia.[7] Evidence of varying models of boats has also been discovered in various Indus Valley sites.[8]
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