The world's oldest boatyard, complete with a wooden platform and tools, has been discovered off the coast of the Isle of Wight, showing Mesolithic man was advanced carpenter.

Archaeologists first suspected a stone age site existed near Yarmouth in the 1990s after fishermen reported dredging up planks of wood, and a lobster was seen throwing worked flints out of its burrow.

But recent excavations by the Maritime Archaeological Trust have shown it is probably the world’s oldest boat building site, dating back around 8,000 years.

This summer archaeologists discovered a platform consisting of around 60 to 70 split timbers, several layers thick, resting on horizontally laid round-wood foundations. It is part of a larger site which runs for around three quarters of a mile.

The craftsmanship shows the timber was cut tangentially - in straight lines like modern planks - rather than radially - from the centre, a skill which nobody thought existed before the Neolithic period, around 4,500BC, when it was used to line tombs.

It suggests that Mesolithic communities already had advanced woodworking skills thousands of years earlier.

Archaeologists knew that boats were widely used in the stone age, from cave paintings and traded goods which must have been brought over water.