Oars

c. 1,500 BC

It should come as no surprise that it was the seafaring Phoenicians who invented the oar. Egyptians began using paddles to move up and down the Nile as early as 3,000 BC. The Phoenician sailors added leverage to this idea by fixing fulcrums (oarlocks) to the sides of their boats, and sliding the oars into them. Today, oars are mainly used in recreational boating. However, up until the invention of steamboats and motorboats, oars were still very important in commercial and military sailing. Even when sailing ships were the preferred nautical mode of transport of the day, people still had to row out to their ships in smaller boats – propelled by oars.