Origins
The genetic lineage SUP shares with outrigger canoeing, Hawaii’s national team sport along with French Polynesia, is all but ignored yet it is intrinsically linked with the origins of stand up paddleboarding. If you want to use the 1940s/60s Waikiki Beach Boy theory of ownership, they remain canoe paddlers and surfers first and foremost who combined both to create what is now a 'new' sport. The surfboard combined with the extended outrigger canoe paddle, two of Hawaii’s indigenous ocean sports, was a natural blend of two skills, surfing and paddling, yet alarmingly, the paddling (canoeing) element in this marriage of Hawaiian sports has been overshadowed on account of surfing’s global appeal and recognition and outrigger canoeing’s relative obscurity.
Top: Stand Up Paddle
Below: Outrigger Canoe Paddle
Just how ancient the sport is, is open to debate. Hawaiian claims of 'surfing' as something they 'invented' is questionable, being that it has been well documented that West Africans had been seen 'surfing' as far back as exploration along the African coastline began, long before Hawaii was populated, but you won't read that small oversight in the travel brochures. It's quite plausible that anywhere throughout Oceania the sport may have been conceived, all that's needed is a long paddle and a stable platform.
A variety of surf historians, including the 1900s surf pioneer, Tom Blake, scholar Ben Finney, James Houston and Leonard Lueras, have acknowledged that other cultures far from the Hawaiian Islands practiced the art of surfing. From the mid-western Atlantic coast of Africa to the shores of Peru.
Off the West African coast, '. . .in areas of Senegal the Ivory Coast and Ghana. Near Dakar, Senegal,' wrote Finney and Houston, 'African youths and young fisherman regularly body-surf, ride body-boards and catch waves while standing erect on boards about six feet long. These Atlantic skills seem in no way connected with the Pacific, either historically or prehistorically. Evidently, it's an old pastime in West Africa; young Africans were seen riding waves while lying prone on light wooden planks as long ago as 1838, long before surfing began to spread from Hawaii.'
There's no escaping the fact that the canoe as we know it throughout the Pacific (Oceania, which includes, Melanesia, Micronesia, Polynesia) is the lifeblood artifact and utilitarian device of these collective cultures. If you combine a canoe paddle with a plank of wood, you get canoe-boarding. It is absolutely plausible that the notion of utilizing canoe skills (paddling) as a means to paddle a raft-like craft, plank or even discarded modified simple dugout while standing, was no doubt 'toyed' with by these ingenious maritime cultures.
And what of the Hasake, a board-boat hybrid of the Stand-up Paddleboard family, with alleged Israeli and Arabic roots, possibly dating back to as far as the 8th century A.D. There are some striking parallels between the Hasake and its increasingly popular Hawaiian cousin. But one of the many things that sets them apart is information. While the Hawaiian SUP has seen a worldwide surge in popularity and much has been written about it, the Isreali-Arabic Hasake remains under the radar for most of the waterman community.
Its prior existance makes the Hasake not a hybrid, but more possibly closer to the 'original; the contemporary SUB the hybrid and so far as being like a boat, it could just as well be associated with a canoe (or perhaps kayak if you want to picky being that it's paddled with an extendedkayak paddle)...