The sea kayak in the arctic, Canada, and British Columbia has a history which spans at least 5,000 years. "It is a fitting tribute to the arctic peoples, builders of the first sea kayak that it survives today as the worlds most popular self propelled watercraft."
The birth place of the kayak was almost certainly the inhospitable coast of Siberia. We know that the peoples who eventually settled the Americas crossed from Siberia sometime during the last Ice age when the land or ice bridge "Berengia" connected the two continents.http://www.coastmountainexpeditions.com/?q=node/141 Siberia & the Aleutian Islands, the birth place of the sea kayak - “qajaq” .
The oldest known archaeological evidence of a kayak goes back 2,000 years B.P. and there is inferential evidence dating it back another 2,000 years. However, given the reality of surviving the harsh environment, arctic peoples most likely always had some way of getting onto the water to hunt or fish. An 8,000 year existence for the kayak is possible, but we will probably never know for sure.
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