Posted on 01/14/2010 4:18:11 AM PST by SunkenCiv
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. H. erectus had spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe by at least that time...
Strasser's team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island's scenario, in Strasser's view.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
The sign of the ancient marinerM. J. Morwood of the University of New England, New South Wales and colleagues discuss stone tools and bones of fossil elephants and other animals, buried between 800,000 and 900,000 years ago on Flores, in the Lesser Sunda island chain east of Java. When sea-level was at its lowest, during the last Ice Age, much of what is now Indonesia was joined up into a single landmass, which included Borneo, Java and Sumatra. Even then, Flores was separated by three deep-water channels, the narrowest 19 km wide. Suggestions that stone tools on Flores and elsewhere in offshore Indonesia could represent a very early phase of human navigational ability have usually met with disbelief. This age suggests that the makers of the tools were Homo erectus, because, as far as we know, there were no members of Homo sapiens in Asia at the time. Not only that, these creatures would have to have crossed the open sea not once, but three times. [And] in Germany 400,000-year-old wooden spears, perfectly shaped for throwing [were left by] people that lived long before modern humans or even Neanderthals came to northern Europe.
by Henry Gee
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Guessing there was an abundance of sea monsters.
*bookmark*
Fascinating topic ping.
“They must of been quite adventurous to shove off into the sea with little knowledge of what lay ahead.”
Probably just tired of living in public housing! ;-)
An assumption. True or false - only time will tell. If you are young enough, you might live to learn that they knew far more than they are credited with currently - or not. Keep in mind that the likely habitable areas during that time are 400-700 feet below sea level today.
Underwater exploration by paleontologists is virtually nonexistent, and only just beginning by archaeologists. No telling what will or will not be found 50 years from now. In the past 50 years the entire period preceding 2000 years ago has changed radically.
The *Out of Africa* theory could just as easily be *Out of the Americas*.
We already know previous man before Homo Sapiens existed far longer than we have.
This just proves they had cooler tools than we thought.
The idea of Cheetah on a raft seems a little strange. It would take tools and ropemaking skills to make a raft. I’m not buying into Cheetah on a tree trunk sailing merrily away into the void.
On the other hand, there are theories that the Med basin was once dry land until the Atlantic broke through at Gibralter and the islands like Crete and Malta were once mountains within the basin.
Hominids walking up to some highlands seems a little more feasible 100 million years ago.
Some here are pointing out that at one time the Mediterranean sea dried out completely, but that was millions of years before the making of these axes. Also, sea levels were much lower during the various cice age glaciations. How much lower? Unknown. Enough to form a land bridge from Turkey, Greece or Egypt to Crete? No, the seas around Crete are too deep.
Therefore, they have to assume the makers of the hand axes had some form of water transportation. Boats? Rafts?
“The *Out of Africa* theory could just as easily be *Out of the Americas*.”
Or for a farther out theory: “Out of Antarctica”... think about it geographically...
The elder Leakey suggested something like that 40? years ago.
I think I can dig that, thanx
Hominids walking up to some highlands seems a little more feasible 100 million years ago.Y'know, had there *been* hominids that long ago...
FYI
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