Abora (expeditions)

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Abora I at sunset on the Mediterranean

Abora (after the Canarian deity Abora ) is the name of four reed boats with which the German researcher and adventurer Dominique Görlitz carried out expeditions in the Mediterranean and the North Atlantic between 1999 and 2019 . In technical terms , reed boats are rafts , so they have the advantage of being unsinkable. The main thesis of the Abora expeditions is that even complex sailing maneuvers can be carried out with square sailors made of reed: They could also sail close to the wind and, under favorable conditions, even against the wind ( cross ). With this it would have been possible already in the Neolithic Age not only to build ocean-going reed boats with simple means, but also to undertake trading trips with them. In the last point, Görlitz went beyond the experiments of Thor Heyerdahl , who undertook long-distance drifts with such rafts, but could essentially only move forward with the current and the prevailing wind.

The Abora II crew in 2002

Sailing on or even against the wind requires building an underwater resistance to drift . In sailing boats, the keel usually takes over the function. However, reed boats do not have a keel. in the case of the Abora, the side swords took over this function instead . These are wooden planks, which were attached to both sides of the hull near the bow and stern and, depending on the requirements for the specific sailing maneuver, either inserted or pulled in a certain configuration ("inserted" means that the swords were let into the water vertically and thus creating an underwater resistance to the drift, "pulled" means that they have been pulled out of the water). Dominique Görlitz recognizes in the representations on rock paintings from different regions indications for the use of such swords , especially in the rock paintings of the Negade culture (3900-3100 BC) in Upper Egypt .

The Abora I arose as a school project in Germany with the use of growing in Germany miscanthus ( Miscanthus ). All of the following boats were commissioned from boat builders from the Aymara people on Lake Titicaca in Bolivia ; The same boat builders worked for Thor Heyerdahl . The material used was the very durable and therefore much more suitable Totora reed .

Boats

Predecessor and test boats: Dilmun

The experimental boat Dilmun S

The Dilmun I-III boats were simple, smaller reed boats that Dominique Görlitz used to test the leeboards technology for the first time. These boats had no cabins and could therefore only be used for day trips. The boats were named after the legendary land of Dilmun in Sumerian mythology.

The Dilmun I was eleven meters long and weighed eight tons, and was launched by Görlitz in 1990 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Atlantic crossing of the RA II in Greifswald in the Baltic Sea. However, the maneuverability was severely limited. Görlitz referred to a six-meter-long reed raft as Dilmun II , which in 1993 at the Wangenheim reservoir (not far from Gotha in Thuringia ) could be sailed at slightly below 90 ° upwind with the help of these movable swords. Modified and referred to as Dilmun III , she was sailed in the Kiel Fjord in 1994 during the Kiel Week .

Görlitz took up the tradition of the Dilmun boats again 15 and 20 years later: the Dilmun IV and Dilmun S operated by the "Verein für Experelle Archäologie und Forschung Chemnitz eV" were or are used to try out the side sword technology on a small scale To train crews for possible expeditions with larger reed boats, as well as demonstration boats. There is a size ratio of about 1: 3 to the Abora boats. The Dilmun IV was built exactly like the Abora boats in Bolivia and consists of the same material; it was first tested in 2009 on the Wangenheim reservoir and then used on various occasions on Lake Constance and the Baltic Sea . Dilmun S was conceived as a long-term project: The hull of the Dilmun S is made of polystyrene (hence the S in the name), but is clad with reed mats for visual reasons. The Dilmun S is used by the association for regular sailing activities on the Geiseltalsee in Saxony-Anhalt , but has also been used elsewhere.

Abora I

The Abora , called Abora I in retrospective , was created in 1996. Dominique Görlitz worked as a teacher at the grammar school "Am Breiten Teich" in Borna ( Saxony ). As part of Jugend forscht , he worked with students from this school on the reconstruction of ancient watercraft. Preparatory work (especially reed harvesting and bundling of the reed rolls) was carried out in Borna, the completion in summer 1998 in Alghero ( Sardinia , Italy ). In 1999 the expedition took place from Alghero, which originally had the goal of reaching the Canary Islands. This turned out to be too ambitious, the trip ended in Piombino ( Tuscany , Italy).

Abora II

The final production took place in 2002 in the Egyptian port city of Alexandria , from here the Abora II sailed in the same year to Beirut ( Lebanon ), from there to Cyprus and then back to Alexandria; The Abora II thus forms the first reed boat expedition of modern times, which returned to the port of departure after a long circuit. On the return trip from Cyprus to Alexandria in Egypt, the square sailer reached courses with currents of up to 68 ° on the true wind .

Abora III

The departure of Abora III in July 2007

With the Abora III , Dominique Görlitz attempted to cross the Atlantic for the first time from west to east with a reed boat. Görlitz considers it possible that such journeys actually took place in antiquity: Görlitz u. a. the discovery of chopped tobacco leaves in the mummy of Ramses II (1298–1213 BC) and the remains of Mexican tobacco beetles in Egyptian graves, as well as cocaine in Egyptian mummies. Both the tobacco plant and the coca plant are native to America only.

Compared to an east-west crossing, which Thor Heyerdahl successfully demonstrated in 1970 with the barely maneuverable reed boat Ra II , a west-east crossing of the Atlantic is much more difficult. This must be done further north along the Gulf Stream . However, this does not flow evenly, but forms huge water vortices. Furthermore, the winds there blow inconsistently from all directions. This means that this crossing cannot be carried out as a practically pure drift, as in the case of the Ra II in the opposite direction, but rather the reed boat must be able to cover longer distances sailing upwind even under adverse circumstances.

The fuselage was also manufactured here in Bolivia (in 2006), and the final assembly a year later in New York . The hull had suffered damage during the transport and the long interim storage. This and other issues sparked controversy both before and during the expedition. Several people withdrew from participating in the expedition, including the intended skipper , who, with reference to serious safety deficiencies, did not want to take responsibility for the ship and crew. The lead shipbuilder (an Aymara Indian from Bolivia ) who was scheduled to take part also decided against taking part, although there are contradicting statements as to whether this was also due to concerns or rather because of a lack of an entry visa for Spain.

On July 11, 2007, the Abora III expedition started in New York . A supportive Azores high at the beginning of August dissolved completely and the crew faced one storm after another. Two of these storm lows reached hurricane strength with winds of up to 51 kn. These bad weather fronts hit the Abora III, but did not yet cause serious damage. However, three leeboards broke in the first storm, but this happened close enough to the American mainland so that replacement swords could be delivered and replaced. In mid-August, after 500 km of the total of around 6000 km, a slack delayed the journey. A hurricane lasting three days then damaged the rear of the Abora III on August 27, 2007 in such a way that it had to be separated from the hull of the vehicle. In a four-day conversion campaign, the crew reinstalled the still intact rudder and shifted the mast further towards the bow (according to Görlitz's illustration, the conversions were based on models from the 5th dynasty, in which the boats, just like the Abora-III, did not have a curved stern The previous configuration was based on pre-dynastic representations, ie the pre-dynastic square-sailer was converted into an ancient Egyptian square-sailer). The modified Abora III could temporarily set full sail and even sail up to 90 ° into the wind. On September 4, the next storm with wind force 10 hit both the Abora-III and an escort ship requested by the Azores . Therefore, on September 5, 2007, the crew broke off the experiment about 900 kilometers from the Azores, the 11-man crew and switched to the escort ship. The reed boat was left in the sea after the cords were cut. A message in a bottle thrown into the water before the boat was evacuated was found in the Bahamas in October 2010 . This shows that a west-east crossing of the Atlantic requires intact sailing ability of the boat (in contrast to the opposite direction: Thor Heyerdahl's Ra II was also badly damaged in 1970, but could still drift to America with the Canary Islands ).

Abora IV

The working hypothesis of Abora IV consisted in understanding possible trade contacts between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. Already Herodotus had in his work histories (the 1st and 2nd book) very early trade contacts of the Egyptians into the Caucasus mentioned on the eastern Black Sea coast over which particular metals to Egypt were imported. According to Görlitz 'assumption, tin and amber were also exported from Central Europe via the Balkans and finally via the Black Sea and Mediterranean to Egypt.

Abora IV in the caldera of Santorini

The boat was built from May to August 2019 in Beloslav near Varna in Bulgaria . Due to the late delivery of the prefabricated reed bundles from Bolivia and due to z. Sometimes extremely bad weather conditions in Bulgaria delayed the launch of the Abora and the start of the expedition could only take place on August 16. At the start in Varna, the crew consisted of 11 men and one woman who represented seven nationalities - Russia, USA, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Norway, Turkey and Germany - and under the motto 'Sailing for Peace!' set sail.

The Abora IV crossed the Bosporus and sailed through the Dardanelles via Troy, Limnos and Santorini to Kaş in Turkey in just 34 days . The two navigational highlights were the independent (i.e. without the assistance of tug boats) entering and leaving the prehistoric port of Poliochni on Limnos as well as the independent navigation of the caldera of Santorini. During the expedition, Dominique Görlitz received an offer from the Turkish Ministry of Culture in Ankara to exhibit the reed boat as a permanent exhibit in the Patara Archeology Park (near Antalya). He then changed the destination from Cyprus to Kaş on the coast of ancient Lycia , where the reed boat anchored for the last time on September 19th. It is now located as a permanent exhibit in the agora of the ancient city of Patara (the Abora IV is the only one of the Abora boats that has survived).

The results of the trip have now been published in book form.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dominique Görlitz: With the reed boat through the sea of ​​stars. The reed boat Abora II cruises along ancient sky routes through the Mediterranean. 2006.
  2. ↑ Bolivia's eco-friendly trans-oceanic ships. In: phys.org. December 13, 2012, accessed May 27, 2020 .
  3. ↑ DILMUN I-III 1990/93/94. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  4. ^ Dilmun IV - 2009. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  5. ↑ DILMUN S - 2014. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  6. ↑ Sailing against the wind. In: Spectrum of Science. January 12, 1999, accessed May 25, 2020 .
  7. ↑ ABORA I - 1999. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  8. ↑ ABORA II - 2002. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Sail like the Stone Age people. In: Hamburger Abendblatt . July 26, 2007.
  10. ↑ S. Balabanova, F. Parsche, W. Pirsig: First identification of drugs in Egyptian mummies. In: Natural Sciences. 79, 1992, p. 358.
  11. ↑ Dominique Görlitz: Prehistoric mechanisms of spread of cultivated plants spread across the Atlantic. Dissertation. DMZ Verlag, Gotha 2012.
  12. ^ Tony Suchon: Sailing to Spain. In: New Jersey Magazine. 2009.
  13. ↑ This expedition is pure madness. welt.de, July 23, 2007, accessed on May 25, 2020 .
  14. ↑ Wind from all sides. sueddeutsche.de, May 22, 2010, accessed on May 25, 2020 .
  15. ↑ ABORA III - 2007. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  16. ↑ bottle of Abora 3. In: thueringer-allgemeine.de. October 29, 2010, accessed May 27, 2020 .
  17. ↑ Florian Stark: How bronze came to the empires of antiquity. welt.de, December 9, 2019
  18. ↑ THE SOFIA GLOBE , August 16, 2019, " 'Abora IV Argonauts from the Stone Age' expedition sails from Bulgaria's Varna " (accessed: May 3, 2020)
  19. ↑ Dominique Görlitz, ABORA IV: Sailing for Peace! - A gesture of friendship between American and Russian researchers (accessed: May 3, 2020)
  20. ↑ Dominique Görlitz, Abora IV - Visiting Çanakkale - Praise and scientific appreciation of our expedition by the archaeological director of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Troy (accessed: May 3, 2020)
  21. ↑ arti49.com , Aug. 27, 2019, under: " Antik Dönemin İzlerini Taşıyan 'Abora-ıv' Gemisi Çanakkale'ye Geldi " (with video, 3:54 min .; accessed: May 3, 2020)
  22. ↑ Antik dönem gemicilik simgesi 'Abora-IV' Kaş'a ulaştı - ANTALYA , September 19, 2019, at beyazgazete.com (with video, 3:38 min .; accessed: May 3, 2020)
  23. ↑ German archaeologist donates replica of ancient ship to Turkey . 20th September 2019.
  24. ↑ Replica of ancient ship to be displayed in Turkey's Antalya . 19th September 2019.
  25. ↑ ABORA IV - 2019. In: abora.eu. Retrieved May 25, 2020 .
  26. ↑ German archaeologist donates replica of ancient ship to Turkey. In: hurriyetdailynews.com. September 20, 2019, accessed May 25, 2020 .
  27. ↑ Replica of ancient ship to be displayed in Turkey's Antalya. In: dailysabah.com. September 19, 2019, accessed May 25, 2020 .
  28. ↑ Dominique Görlitz, The Argonauts of the Stone Age - In Search of the Iron of the Pharaohs , Weltbuch Verlag, 1st edition, ISBN 978-3-906212-51-7 .