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Humans have intensively sailed the Mediterranean and European Atlantic waters throughout history, from the upper Paleolithic until today and centuries of human seafaring have established complex coastal and cross-seas navigation networks.
Historical literature revealed three major long-lasting maritime routes eastern, western, northern with four commencing locations Alexandria, Venice, Genoa, Gibraltar and a fourth route circum-Italian that connected between them.
Due to oceangoing and technological constraints, most voyages were coastal, lasted weeks to months, with extended resting periods, allowing the development of fouling organisms on ship hulls. One of the abiding travellers in maritime routes is the colonial ascidian Botryllus schlosseri already known since the eighteenth century in European and Mediterranean ports. This species, was almost certainly one of the common hull fouling travellers in all trade routes for centuries.
These results reveal that past anthropogenic transports of sedentary marine species throughout millennia long seafaring have left their footprint on contemporary seascape genetics of marine organisms. It is not really known when humans began cross sailing the Mediterranean Sea and European Atlantic, albeit the availability of documentation from the upper Paleolithic period from about 11, BCE 1 , and crossing the English Channel, as well as from the Bronze Age, about BCE 2 , 3.
