Las piraguas de La Marmotta, auténtica ingeniería para navegar por el Mediterráneo durante la expansión neolítica

This work has as its discursive axis the information published on two of the five Neolithic pirogues documented in the Neolithic settlement of La Marmotta (Anguillara Sabazia, Lazio, Italy), and how this finding can give us new data on navigation and Neolithic expansion through the Mediterranean. It is a crucial submerged archaeological site, located in the Bracciano lake, whose anaerobic conditions have allowed the preservation of exceptional biotic remains. The characteristics of these canoes, as well as the associated naval elements, reflect the social complexity of these societies, but also some technological knowledge hardly unimaginable. To know La Marmotta is to understand much better the Neolithic societies and the success of their expansion. Undoubtedly they knew navigation and the Mediterranean Sea. Otherwise it is difficult to suppose how they began their diaspora around 10000 BC from the Near East, arriving to the Portuguese coast around 5400 BC. They domesticated plants and animals, and modified all technological spectrum and, thanks to deposit like La Marmotta, we can evaluate this process. Without any doubt, we are the heirs of those societies.