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Water has been used to transport people and cargo since the spread of humans to islands began. The first circumstantial evidence of human transport over the open ocean is the human arrival in Australia about 50,000 thousand years. The earliest examples of this open ocean transportation in recorded history is between 1,300 BC and 900 BC when the the Pacific Lapita culture based in Eastern Papua New Guinea used the Polynesian double-hulled sailing vessels with advanced rigging to navigate 6,000 km across open ocean from the Bismarck Archipelago east to Fiji, Samoa, and eventually Hawaii.

In Egypt images in clay tablets depicting the first Canal boats can be dated to 6,000 BC and show boats constructed out of papyrus and propelled by oars. These boats were used to transport people and cargo up and down the Nile river. This was the way that many ancient people navigated and transported goods. Various specialized crafts were developed for river and canal transport. Canals were first developed for transportation in Mesopotamia c. 4000 BC. They later spread around the world to the Indus Valley Civilization in Pakistan and North India (from c. 2600 BC) which created the first canal irrigation system in the world.^[6] China's canal system, whose greatest accomplishment was the Sui Dynasty's 1,794-kilometer (1,115 mi) 7th-century Grand Canal between Hangzhou and Beijing, was used for irrigation, flood control, taxation, commercial and military transport, and colonization of new lands. Canals were developed in the Middle Ages in Europe in Venice and the Netherlands. In the Industrial Revolution, inland canals were built in England and later the United States before the development of railways.

Canals are a key part of water based transportation because, once built, they are very efficient. In early times travel by canal was preferred to other forms of travel because it had much less risk of incident and was often faster then ground transportation. The Lock was a key invention of the lock which allowed canals to traverse varying topography allowing for much wider transportation.

The other main method of water transportation in the pre industrial world was near shore sailing. Here boats did not cross large swaths of open ocean but instead traveled along the coasts. This was common because water was the most efficient and safest way to transport cargo within trading zones. Boats stayed near the shore because they lacked advanced navigation techniques and didn't want to risk being caught out in the middle of the sea by a storm.

Admiral Zheng He the Chinese navigator was one of the first people to connect the maritime trading zones of East Asia with the Indian ocean. After this the sea fairing people of Asia, Europe, and the Indian Ocean, were able to connect via ocean trading routes after Vasco de Gamma rounded the cape of good hope in navigate into the Indian Ocean in 1498.

OOCL Hong Kong largest container ship in the world

The next revolution in this type of transportation took place when Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain to America crossing the Atlantic Ocean in 1492. He did this by using the newly invented clock mixed with celestial navigation to accurately estimate his location in the open ocean. With this achievement open ocean travel was shown to the world and maritime transport took a leap forward.

Global maritime trade developed into a global commodity exchange as raw materials and goods where transported throughout the developing world. In the Industrial Revolution, the first steamboats and later diesel-powered ships were developed. Since the Industrial revolution the scale of this maritime transportation has grown. By the 1960s the cargo container was widely in use and a ship was designed that could carry 1,000 Twenty-foot equivalent containers. Now Over 50,000 ships are used for commercial transportation every day. The largest of these vessels the OOCL Hong Kong which can carry 21,413 TEU shipping containers. This means that this ship can hold 29,121,680 cubic feet of cargo if fully loaded. Transportation via water has been key to the expansion of the human race and the development of the global trade.