bellyboarding

Prone method of wave-riding using a small, thin, rigid board. Bellyboarding was almost certainly the original form of board-surfing, and is thought to date back as far as 2,000 B.C. The oldest extant bellyboards—owned by Honolulu's Bishop Museum, and probably built in the early 18th century— are flat and blunt-nosed, between four and four and a half feet long, made of either breadfruit or koa wood...