People in Scandinavia may have used boats made of animal skins to hunt and trade 5,000 years ago

Ancient Scandinavians may have used boats constructed of animal skins to fish, hunt and trade, a new study suggests.

Known as the Pitted Ware Culture (PWC), this waterfaring Neolithic group of hunter-gatherers lived in Scandinavia between 3500 and 2300 B.C., according to the study, published Aug. 26 in the Journal of Maritime Archaeology.

The group is perhaps best known for its pottery, which features flat-bottomed vessels stylized with horizontal lines slashed into the clay before firing. They were also adept maritime hunters, particularly when it came to hunting seals. 

Archaeologists think the PWC may have used the hides of these web-footed aquatic maMMAls to build watercraft, as well as oil from the seals' blubber to help maintain the boats.

"We know that these people were hunting lots of seals, as evidenced by the massive amounts of seal bones we're finding at sites that they inhabited," lead study author Mikael Fauvelle, a researcher in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University in Sweden, told Live Science. "Seals were also one of the best animals for making boats, as we know that the Inuit [an Indigenous group living in Canada, Greenland and Alaska] were applying oil from seals as a critical step in waterproofing their boats. We know that the PWC had large quantities of seal oil, which can be found in their pottery [at archaeological sites]."

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Researchers analyzed the interiors of several pots and found traces of lipid residue from seal oil, Fauvelle added.