Ancient hominids may have been seafarers

[Adsos Letter]

Source: ScienceNews
Bruce Bower

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. It was around that time that H. erectus spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe.

Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.

“We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” Strasser says. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53219/title/Ancient_hominids_may_have_been_seafarers

[Bobbieo]

1. Fascinating! I was almost laughed out of anthro classes some 40 years

ago when I maintained that not all Indian tribes who got to the New World came here via the Siberian Land Bridge during the last Ice Age. Many of them island hopped from all over the globe.

The oceans and seas were lowered several hundred feet during that era and islands popped up out of the water which were submerged again when the glaciars retreated.

[Warpy]

3. You were way ahead of your time, then

because the island hopping scenario is beginning to eclipse the land bridge theory.

After all, they would have had much better hunting had they been in boats instead of walking across icy land.

[Bobbieo]

4. The class, even the instructor, thought I was some kinda nut, BUT I was

a geology major at one time and I thought if the Siberian Land Bridge had been raised during the Ice Age other islands could have also emerged all over the world. It just made sense!!!

[hunter]

13. The lower sea levels would mean the archaeological evidence was now underwater.

And even then, only in some rare places, since most of it would have been ground up in the rising surf.

Even elephants and their kin did a fair amount of island hopping.

There have also been a number of catastrophic events that severely reduced human populations over widespread areas.

[aquart]

5. What? You, too?

My contention being that toddlers and pregnant women were probably not all that pleased with the long walk.

[Bobbieo]

6. And, it was one hellluva long walk from Siberia to Tierra Del Fuego

at the tip of South America.

[aquart]

7. Well, at least at some point they would have headed south.

The professor hated me for pooh-poohing the land bridge, and savannah theory, and all theories relating to bipedalism (I even wrote a short play: George and Martha Hominid or How to Walk on Two Legs and Get Nowhere). AND for saying that people reached America WAAAAY before 11,000 BC.

And once I found out I could read a Nahuatl calender with an indoeuropean word roots glossary, there was just no talking to me at all.

[depakid]

10. +1

[roguevalley]

2. awesome as ever, adsos letter. makes them have to rejigger the

IQ of some of the earlier hominids. I wish I could have seen it. Must have been awesome.

[Bobbieo]

8. Sorta puts a new light on Columbus Day, huh!

[1]

9. the question truly is... how would ancient hominids have reacted to sea shepherds?

would *they* have sunk their bat boat?

hummm...

one wonders...

[morningglory]

11. I was involved in a lab at FSU measuring an archaic period "cemetary"

around Cape Kennedy (Canaveral at the time). The females were 6 ft tall and all the skeletons had dolichocephalic crania. Around 100 specimens. Hmmm...

[UTUSN]

12. An endearing factoid: The mighty Romans were skeered of the wide open ocean

I heard or read that somewhere and it struck me as endearing that the rough and tough Romans stuck to the coasts as much as they could.