Poti - LEGO SPIKE Prime boat robot

Introduction

In this lesson, we will learn how the ancient people managed to use the wind to navigate the seas, and we will build a boat robot!

People have used water for transportation for thousands of years. It was useful when you go downstream on a river or a sea current.

What do you think they did to go upstream?

They needed to use people with oars to fight against the current, which was really tiring and couldn't work for a long distance. So, people invented the first sailboats! They used the power of wind, which allowed them to go further faster, and they didn't need so many people to move them. The first record of a sailboat is a drawing on a vase in Egypt around 5500 years ago. However, sailboats were probably invented a long time before that.

The Phoenicians were the most famous naval people of the ancient Mediterranean world. They used their sailing boats to discover and trade with lands throughout the entire Mediterranean Sea, and even beyond, reaching as far as the British Isles. They became a massive trading empire and invented an alphabet, which was later the basis for the Greek and Latin alphabets we still use today!

Another people who mastered sailing around the same time were the natives of southeast Asia, who managed to sail all around the Pacific Ocean and reach even the furthest islands there.