It’s not underestimating. It’s being cautious about making conclusions in the absence of evidence. Sure, we can imagine the ways something might have happened. But putting those ideas out there as if they’re true isn’t science, it’s just speculation.
Hallelujah! Someone read a book!!! I have listened to dozens of early-history and pre-history presentations, and this is the first mention of Thor Heyerdahl! The man demonstrated that rafting from South America to (French) Polynesia was not only possible, but also that many of the foodstuffs of the Americas were then being grown there. Additionally, he crossed the Atlantic twice in reed boats, from Africa to South America (Voyage of the Ra). His later work investigated lower Iraq, Oman, and Indian Ocean islands, finding very early communication among them. Needless to say, all of this has fallen between the cracks, possibly because he wrote best sellers.
These who don’t believe in water travel never were camping with human children obviously. Any 5 year old who has spent time in the wild next to a body of water has planned to build a raft to reach an unknown spot. Logs don’t have to be dug out to float. It’s very workable even for long distances. Lash logs together to carry more people.
Your discussion re sea travel made me think of the Solutrean Hypotheses, which makes loads of sense if you know how the Inuit live along the sea ice. Crossing the Atlantic 20,000 years ago? Why not!
One reason for the lack of boats being found may be that they were disassembled upon arrival. The wood may have been used to build the first shelters used by the settlers. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, boats were built in the Ohio River area, used to carry goods to New Orleans, and disassembled with the wood sold along with the trade goods.
“If we have seen farther than others, it is only because we have stood upon the shoulders of giants.” (Bernard of Chartres [Circa 1100s]) Little evidence of prehistoric maritime or coastal seafaring exists because the most common type of watercraft employed by our ancient ancestors were made of hide stretched over frames. We could look at the hide canoes (or kayaks) used by Inuit peoples within recent historical (and possibly living) memory, many of which were quite large. For remnants closer to home (best employed for river travel) Britain still retains possession of many iconic examples. Just look at that charming Northumbrian spokeshaver's coracle your eccentric uncle used as a guitar cozy back in the sixties.
The Inuit distinguish their large, multi-passenger ocean-going boats (umiaks) from their single and double-person inshore kayaks. They are still being built today, using traditional designs, with the exception of using metal screws and fittings, and sometimes an outboard motor. They usually range from 6 to 10 metres in length, but a Greenlandic account from the 18th century describes one of 18 metres. They sometimes employ sails made from seal intestines, but being keel-less, they cannot tack. They are quite seaworthy, and are still preferred for whaling in the western arctic because whales can hear the distinctive sound of metal boats, but not the sealskin umiaks.
@@rosemcguinn5301 That one was definitely exceptional, and we only have one reference to it from a Danish missionary. 6-10 metres is, as far as I know, the long-established standard. Umiaks are still popular because they weigh as a little as one fifth as much as any "modern" vessel of the same size, and have the advantage of being made from local materials ---- in a place where every import from the south of Canada has extremely high prices (this month, a single head of lettuce goes for 5.67 C$ in the capital, Iqaluit. That would be £3.29 UK, or €3.82 ---- and it would not be a good quality lettuce). Umiaks can also be moved easily over snow and ice.
On the subject of primitive shark fishing. I was brought up on the Southern tip of Africa, home of the Great White shark documentaries, and all us kids played in the Southern Ocean. For my generation, it was surfing, spear fishing and scuba diving. My father's generation did not have that gear. They went shark fishing for fun! They'd get hold of a sheet of galvanized steel roofing and convince a steam roller driver to flatten it for them, then bend the ends up into a boat shape, joining the ends with pieces of plank, bent over nails and road tar caulking--then go shark fishing! They'd use a parafin can as a float and when the shark was tuckered out--drag it ashore. (I don't believe it was huge Great Whites that they were catching. Probably the more moderately sized sharks that we saw when spear fishing.)
I was surprised when I was reading cultural geography for my degree, the things my mother knew about medicine. She was born at home, as had all of our line before her. She laughed about my ignorance of the uses of queen Anne's lace, and other hedge row herbs. She had always said to beware the pennyroyal. I was 23 before I knew what that meant!
Taiwan (Formosa) is clearly visible from Yonaguni, one of the Southern Ryukus - and vice versa. From Yonaguni the other Southern Ryukyu Islands are visible at half way points. Reaching the gap to Northern Ryukyus would have been by drift on the Kuroshio. Polynesians took this route a few thousand years later.
Specie don't evolve then find an environment, they inhabit an environment then evolve. Genes show Denisovans evolved in the mountains. Neanderthal evolved in forests and the anatomy shows an ambush predator. We evolved around water. We're the only hominid that throws overarm and we're unique in the use of projectiles - derived from our over arm swimming style. We can spear fish, which requires an over arm throw. We gravitate to water. Every sapien site we know that dates prior to the Younger Dryas is within a few tens of miles of a coastline. The earliest we know of comes from a cave 30 miles from the Atlantic ocean in Morocco. I cannot fathom us not using watercraft from the get go.
Kudos for mentioning the Pesse Cannoe. It was obviously not capable of crossing oceans (although it would definitely float). But before an intelligent ape would go to that length to create something so very specific (probably fishing or hunting in swampy areas like Doggerland), it would have tied together several logs to cross bodies of water. Large and sturdy enough rafts of well-placed logs could go very far. And obviously, of those, only (fossilised) treetrunks might remain. With sea-level much lower, virtually all of those are at the bottom of the ocean.
Just bumped into your channel. Very interesting, who knew I liked archaeology? One thing that strikes me is the outstanding sound quality. Everything about it. Both the technicals and the voices themselves. Super clear and intimate, both sides great, lovely pacing, no rushing, reasonable modulation. Great stuff. Thanks.
It's now January, 2023, and I've just come across your channel. I've been a big fan of all things paleo for thirty years or so, ever since I read Clan of the Cave Bear and the subsequent books. Of course, these books by Jean Auel, supposedly set about 35,000 years ago, were wildly off in any number of ways, but what she had intuited and communicated through story, was that humans traveling and trading and living in complicated societies in the much more distant past than had been admitted until rather recently by academics. The books were enormous leaps of imagination! She imagined and explained exactly how the very first dog was brought into human family life, how soap was first discovered, how boats were made and used for travel and trade, how a horse could have been seen as trasportation, rather than a creature for roasting and feasting, and so much more. I like to reread the series every decade or so, not for accuracy, but for her ability to so fully inhabit human society of the long gone ago. (Anyhow, I have subscribed, and look forward to more of your broadcasts. I do hope you have continued your discussions over the last few years, even though we are no longer confined to quarters.)
Oscar Speck paddled a folding kayak from Germany to Australia in the 1930s looking for work,he arrived in Australia just in time to be interned due to the war. Probably why he is little known. Of course pre historic man was as,if not more,capable of doing the same.
After Kayaking for months, imagine his surprise when he found out what had been happening in the world ... euphoric emotions turned into one of the biggest disappointments in history
@@douginorlando6260 He stayed in Australia after the war . I wonder whether he ever flew back to Germany to visit . Imagine flying over half a planet that you took years to paddle across . Though he did have a sail on his kayak .
In love poetry of previous centuries one point of praise of the beloved was 'breath like honey'. Presumably because this was different to the breath of most people.
It's remarkable how this actually resonates with the theories Buckminster Fuller developed about the history of mankind originating in seafaring. He developed a complete picture of human prehistory focused on the sea as the link. He even went so far as to read the story of Adam and Eve as a myth based on a sailor (adam) developing a ribbed ship (eVe) that was able to carry load across the open sea, thus learning from the sea (embodied by Naga, the sea snake god, think waves) that the earth is a sphere (apple) that one could travel around any way to get back where one left... I always found those theories intriguing, amazing to see it supported by archaeology!
I think there's a Jeremy Wade fishing special where he catches a shark in a dugout canoe. The native dude lures it in by slapping the water with a weird paddle-spoon thing.
I got such a chuckle envisioning an early ancestor trying to pull in a shark into a canoe! Or netting one? 🤣 which begs to ask... Hooks?? Line?? Did they have the ability to make nets? From what? Or were they precursor’s to Bull Riding and just hopped out of the boat and onto the back of Tuna and stone axed it to death? Dare we say that overall, we have underestimated our earliest ancestor’s. And as you said, opened a can of worms.. no pun intended as we do not know what they used for bait 😄 but makes our minds travel down many a rabbit hole! It also brought to mind the Disney Movie Moana and how she discovered her ancestors were wayfarers. Not sure the date her wayfarer’s were but.... it is based on the Polynesian Indigenous people.
Plenty of stoneage hooks and lines and nets. We fish from canoes on the high sea. Spearing tuna is no problem. We use a wooden clubs to dispatch tuna. Sometimes you bull ride a tigershark. I use polynesian navigation technique since I was a kid.
I absolutely love each and every thing you guys cover. You are absolutely bad ass! I wish I knew you or people like you guys!!! Thank you for sharing our similar interest topic gossips I can't get enough 👍🙏🙏🙏🤓
There are a lot of artifacts to be found along the 30' depth contour underwater, and sea level has fluctuated back and forth as much as 400' or more. Humans tend to habitate close to shorelines. I think ancient mariners were far more proficient than we have yet verified.
Early language in Homo Erectus is particuarly argued by Daniel Everett - One of his indicators is Homo Erectus remains (tools I think) found on socrata 200 miles from Yemen and 100 miles or so from Africa - I've tried to find coroboration of this (google), but can't find anything except in Spanish. He argues (and rightly so I think) that you can't make such a journey by mistake and that you would need language to organize - "boat" building - stocking up food - organizing etc - I have twice crossed the Atlantic in a home-made polynesian catamaran and can indeed confirm it needed a lot of language (and indeed a lot of bad language) - Cheers
Fascinating! Incredible to think humans have been here for 1 million years. Have you ever read Jack London's Tales of the South Seas? There's an incredible story about a man who picks up an islander who says he can help him navigate to his boat without a map. It's a staggering account and really explains a lot of what you are ruminating on.
Sadness and laughter are close in emotions and used in plays to strike emotions without being completely sad. Nervous laughter about death is more common and normal than people realize. On the hobbit getting to the island I sarcastically asked a very smart person that said they could not have used boats if maybe big birds hauled them there for food source. He did not catch the sarcasm, I wondered if he thought it was possible.
Really great episode, so glad you could talk about ancient maritime archaeology. Just had something to say about people travelling to islands they cannot see, there is a phenomena where by the haze on a sunny day can allow one to see around the earth's curvature slightly, could be how people made to far off islands
Megiddo is well worth visiting, although it's a bit tricky without a car. The original excavators were frankly rather casual, especially about preservation, but there are some very interesting parts, and a good visitor centre. (It's not technically pre-historic, given that it's the site of the first documented battle in history. (Thanks, Thutmoses III.)
Thanks guys. Interesting and thought provoking. They seem to be more tuned into the natural environments. Perhaps they followed migrating whale or bird populations and with larger land masses ocean currents were different than they are today. I forget who said this but we are a species with amnesia. So much knowledge has been lost over time but without that knowledge we wouldn't be here today. Just a thought.
You guys are amazing Epic idea about Homo Erectus speaking, otherwise how would they plan to travel to an unseen place? Interesting point You guys have the most soothingly posh voices too - very nice to listen to Keep up the great work!!!
Banana trees are very durable. You can split one in half down to the bulb and grow two! They can travel also believe it or not! We grow them in Texas so I'm betting they could grow them in Israel!
A most dramatic prehistoric feat of navigation was necessary for the settlement of Australia by human beings. At all times in the last million years, Australia has been separated from any land to the north by broad, deep channels. The distance from Timor to the Australian shore is 500km, a distance unchanged even during minimum sea levels. Accidental crossings are extremely unlikely. The channel is very deep and sustains a powerful and rapid current --- any accidental drifter would be swept westward into the Indian Ocean. A seaworthy vessel manned by experienced navigators would be required. Archaeological evidence indicates that Australia was settled 65,000 years ago.
Congrats Amanda! Gentleman I am listening while preparing the Christmas dinner, I love your show, Merry Christmas. A couple of theories, Desperation was the motivation to risk everything, if you have nothing left to lose…. either from an invading tribe because your current island is closer to the mainland, natural disaster, disease, famine, caused these people to risk everything, similar to Easter Island where they supposedly ran out of trees because of their obsession with building monuments, or to the Viking Invasions, although they knew the UK and Ireland existed. Another thing, I saw a documentary about prehistoric migration in Polynesia and it ran computer simulations of prevailing winds and if I remember correctly during El Niño years the prevailing winds made it possible to reach remote islands, food for thought. Thank you for the wonderful content.
Regarding going by boat, the question seems to be, what knowledge and set of skills do you need to have in order to decide to risk it? Certainly, for example: knowledge of weather patterns. Because you wouldn't want to chance the trip unless you were fairly certain you weren't going to run into any huge storms along the way.
200 generations in one spot, still living there today...!? Astounding. How can people be so stable for so long and yet still scraping by for scraps the entire time...
A 2015 study found the average American lives 18 miles from their mother. And I've seem values of 68-72% of Americans live in or near the place they grew up. The broad range of accents across the UK is also an indication of how little generations of people have moved without a severe impetus to do so.
I am 70yrs. old and have always thought our professional assessment of earlier human capabilities has been way off. It seemed obvious?! Another tell tale fact that bothered me was that, all the pictures showing how early man may have looked , depicted them as ugly! Modern forensic re-creations , which are fairly accurate , show them much more like us today.
The banana producers simply subcontracted the transport to…. Wait for it ….wait for it…l ANCIENT ALIENS…😉 But you’d have thought they’d give us at least a couple of tips on dental hygiene, wouldn’t you? Excellent presentation, loved it 👍
I believe the stone circles and other megalithic sites are related to navigation, both land and sea. If you think about it, if the ocean was 400ft or so lower during the ice age, the distances between continents was much less.
Thanks Randy. However, the megalithic sites were built WAY after the ice ages ended. The last ice age ended about 11,500 years ago. Megalithic building in Europe lasted from approx 4,500BC to 2,500BC.M😊
@@ThePrehistoryGuys I was thinking about the earliest sites we’ve found so far, such as Gobekli Tepe. I think they were making stuff out of ice blocks long long ago.
@@randycompton5230 But that's in Turkey. Ice sheets didn't extend down there. Moreover Göbekli Tepe isn't a megalithic site - it's a settlement. The pillars we see today were roof supports inside a building when in use.
the polynesians said they would follow the migratory birds that followed the currants at certain times of year , they knew the birds flying of across the sea were heading for land and they followed they were masters of their enviroment . like the dove for noah or ravens for vikings
Sailors went to Australia 65000 years ago. The people who made that wooden structure more than 400 000 years ago in Southern Africa were likely able to dug out a canoe from a tree trunk.
There are possibly two ways to see this. Inventing boats to get from A to B, or, using boats as a daily way of life. The former will only reveal crude boats in the archaeological record, the later will show more developed boats.
During my internet travels in the last year, I saw a video reproduction of what an acient would have sounded like do to the size of a 'piece' of him that they had related to speech. The said "You would think this guy had a deep commanding tone due to his looks, when in fact, his voice would have been high pitched almost 'screaching'."
In the general case it's risky to assume that two land masses between which travel is currently oceanic could not have been populated without oceanic travel. Particularly in some parts of the world, islands and seas can emerge and disappear more than once in the sort of time periods we're looking at here. The British Isles were connected to what is now Scandinavia because most of the North Sea was actually land, to take one well known example, within the human era. Of course as well as sea levels having been mobile, so has ice cover, both of which wreak major topological changes. Furthermore, it is not necessary to have had a contiguous land (or ice) bridge at some past era. If islands emerged in sequence, short hops could have been made to travel long distances across what will later appear to be unbroken ocean. Of course this does not apply on the timescale of the Polynesian colonisation of the Pacific, but in prehistory it must have happened more than once.
@Lessons in Logic But sea level is not the only significant variable; there are several others. And your opening statement is a gratuitous assertion, not borne out by the reasoning in this clip.
@Lessons in Logic I made no attempt to rebut your claim about sea level mapping, I was pointing out that sea level is not the only explanation of exposed topographic change. I could have pointed out that it was a non-sequitur to use sea level mapping in support of the nonsensical claim beginning "No one assumes..." but I'm not really writing to convince you, I see that as a lost cause. I guess I'm posting more in the hope that some of the others reading our interchange will be appropriately skeptical of your pronouncements. Is your posting handle intentionally ironic, or is the irony accidental? As for your question about other factors: I'll give any genuinely interested readers (one can always hope!) clues to three of them: Why are there sea shells embedded in rock strata of the high Himalaya? Why are there islands in the Pacific which were not there mere decades ago? How did humans get to North America about 13k years ago (hint: they did not walk on land, nor travel over the sea) (Incidentally, it is generally considered highly unlikely that Australian aboriginals travelled there by water, despite there seemingly not, during that era, having ever been a contiguous land bridge.)
The Caribbean. No surprise about Trinidad and Tobago. I was headed there with my boat, to spend a few years in the area, prior to heading for the Pacific. Easterly winds, and currents South Cuba, and Mnorth Venezuela, meant I planned to leave East Caribbean to spend Hurricane Season Sheltering on the West Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Clockwise Currents into the Gulf Stream or North Cuba Coast, and it's a .insurers trip to the Texas Coast and Florida, and to head back to nice islands once zhurricane Season, you have to cross the Gulf zstream to get to the Bermuda Bank, or edge North in the current North of Cuba, to get onto the Bermuda Bank. I'd planned to relax there for swimming , fishing eating, and drinking wine at anchor. Why. Because the Water in many parts is only around 10 ft deep! So thousands of years ago, people didn't have to sail huge distances, they could have walked them, because they were Dry Land, and many boat trips, could have been to land (bigger islands too) that was clearly visible from where they were leaving. The Caribbean is a great place to Sail around, and with consistent good wind speeds, ancestors that weren't idiots, would have made good use of it imho. Oh and Sharks aren't just deep Sea by any stretch, and lots of them aren't very big. Fishing for them was very common, because Shark Skin was highly prized as Sandpaper. Even today, Pacific islanders catch Tuna from small boats. A livelihood presently being destroyed by French Trawlers Slaughtering Their Tuna Stocks. Such Criminal Irresponsibility tbh, makes me Really Angry. 😡 eta. So Angry Sorry, I forgot to wish you All The Best. Bob .👍🏴
The dog with the boy is interesting, there is a extensive prehistoric cult around dogs and burials. Dogs are also gatekeepers for the other realm (Cerberus) the pup helps the boy pass through safely I suppose.
If coastal people mainly took crustaceans and shore fish at first....maybe sneaking up on seal pods on the beach...well, if they ever came across a floating corpse, they might begin to experiment with building skin boats.
I'm totally astounded by the fairly common statement: 'They didn't have boats, so they must drifted across accidentally.' It's so daft! (A) Drifting is SLOW. (B) If the crossing is 'accidental'--they would not have 'accidentally' loaded the drifting object with sufficient food and water for a long incredibly slow trip! They would not survive.
If bananas were traded 7000 years ago between the middle east and Asia, it makes you wonder on how well connected the ancient world was in comparison to what mainstream archeology states
Perhaps the people traveling long distances across water to relocate had already been fisher people, and over, say, 200 generations of experience making ever better sea craft, they had expanded their fishing grounds right out to the islands, and at some point, maybe on account of population pressure, or just to get away from the in-laws, they moved their whole families over.
Unlikely to be walking from SE to SW Asia, more likely they went by boat. But as well as moving dried fruit, they could have moved plants - not every attempted introduction of a new plant is going to succeed. Someone could have been growing bananas for a few years until they lost them in a harsh winter.
There are lots of contemporary and even current accounts of people surviving stranded at sea for day, weeks and months surviving on rain water, fish and captured birds. If you had a vessel that was unlikely to sink and a water carrying system that was fairly good early humans or even ancient humans could travel the seas readily and extensively. Especially if these sailors understood weather patterns and if they sailed at a time there were more surface fish and more birds willing alight on the floating log(s) ignorant of the fact they were destined to be caught, strangled, their blood drunk and their flesh dried in the sun to be consumed at leisure.
The fact that Japan can't be seen from the mainland isn't really relevant, they would have had fishing boats that regularly sailed out and back occasionally getting blown out to sea and noticing Japan before finding their way home. There would also be explorers who would sail out as far as they dared before returning and as boats improved someone would discover Japan and it would take about no time for settlers to get organized, it's free land! In every case I can think of, except the poles maybe, the intention of exploring was to settle the land particularly if it was uninhabited and fertile so guessing that there was land over the horizon was unnecessary since they were going to go out there and find out for sure even when they lost explorers at sea. It is human nature, actually just the nature of living things , to expand the territory of the species to the point that some individuals and groups migrate to their deaths but it means that the species expands to every habitable place it can conceivably get to even with deadly risks. Of course, if they noticed bird activity or cloud formations that indicated land it would be a priority, they were experts at using nature's signposts but many explorers set out with no indication of what is beyond the horizon because they want to discover the unknown.
20 feet less sea level and the Caribbean is a whole different place. Tortuga island and most of the way to it would've been above water for miles and miles. Sure it doesn't point right to Cuba but it would've made the keys 40-50 miles longer. Not sure past it but its still shallow for a ways. How scared would you be if you could see bottom but not land? You'd know it was coming eventually else it would get real deep. I've walked 2 miles out into the ocean and it never got up to my chest, kicked a shark or a ray and came back with my calf abraded to ribbons. Anyway... Small wonder they came from the North. Maybe they followed the manatees out? They have a seasonal migration of a few hundred miles.
Hawaiins still deep sea fish in one man cannoes today. Yes there very modern versions these days but there's a lot of places where you don't have to go out that far to fish deep waters.
I think that assuming that the ocean currents were the same 50000 years ago or any other period were the same as today is not believable. The Ice Ages lowered the sea levels by 200m and that would change the currents.
Hi Ben, Rupert here. The research relating to the ocean currents was specific to RyuKyu Islands and based on analysis of sediments. Having said that, I totally agree that it seems to be a bold statement.
I think that dispensing with terms like primitive might help. The facts are clear. People got to these distant places by sea. How they did it, we do not know, but they did. The proof is incontrovertible . We have not been able to accept that facilities like language, may be far more ancient than we thought, or that intelligence was far more advanced than we give credit for. It is because of this that I am of the opinion that the Americas was reached far earlier than is thought now. The idea that the Americas would not be peopled far earlier than we currently have hard evidence for, seems preposterous .
If people were skinning animals, and stretching and drying hides, then they would know how wind could catch one, even blowing one away. It isn't a great leap to making a sail...
Prehistoric boats were made of things that don't last, even wooden ships of the nineteenth century are mostly gone. Making a boat is not all that hard, any people by the water would figure it out. It almost seems that Homo is driven to do so. I spent ~25 years enthralled to boat building. Of course they had sails. Stand up in anything that floats and you are a sail. I once sailed a rubber dinghy with a failed motor about a mile and landed precisely where I wanted by standing up, holding my arms out and angling my body to the wind. As well as birds, stationary clouds indicate islands.
Absolutely right. I did a bit more research and certainly modern sharks can come as shallow as 1ft of water. Not to mention bull shark attacks in rivers. So I think we can abandon shark eating as a evidence of far ocean sailing.
It's no big mystery that certain materials that ancient peoples utilized wouldn't survive. Wood, reed, leaves, animal skin & most organic materials available to them would decompose especially in wet, humid environments. Stone & bone & clay & metal is what survives to be found later in most cases.
Jesus, they probably took trees back and planted them, that would be the most sensible thing to do, and it was Papua New Guinea where Musa acuminata subspecies banksii had been cultivated for 7,000 years. The Papuans might be 'hunter/gatherers' but they know how to garden.
I wonder if one should say these people haven't moved in 200 generations. Perhaps it might be better said, that there is an individual (s) there who have not moved, but many many others did - all across the continent. A slightly different way of looking at it
I always think there's a danger in underestimating the skills and knowledge of our ancestors, just as there is in believing we are advanced today.
It’s not underestimating. It’s being cautious about making conclusions in the absence of evidence. Sure, we can imagine the ways something might have happened. But putting those ideas out there as if they’re true isn’t science, it’s just speculation.
Lovely broadcast. "Traveling on the water" = seafaring 😜👍🏽!
Thor Heyerdahl did trailblazeing work on long distance seafareing 70 years ago.
Hallelujah! Someone read a book!!! I have listened to dozens of early-history and pre-history presentations, and this is the first mention of Thor Heyerdahl! The man demonstrated that rafting from South America to (French) Polynesia was not only possible, but also that many of the foodstuffs of the Americas were then being grown there. Additionally, he crossed the Atlantic twice in reed boats, from Africa to South America (Voyage of the Ra). His later work investigated lower Iraq, Oman, and Indian Ocean islands, finding very early communication among them. Needless to say, all of this has fallen between the cracks, possibly because he wrote best sellers.
Absolutely!
These who don’t believe in water travel never were camping with human children obviously. Any 5 year old who has spent time in the wild next to a body of water has planned to build a raft to reach an unknown spot. Logs don’t have to be dug out to float. It’s very workable even for long distances. Lash logs together to carry more people.
Or just use a fallen tree, hollow or otherwise.
You don't have to deal g out logs if you are a master of fire . And they were many burned out logs to make canoes
Imagine dredging the Nile, The Euphrates, the Danube... Probably half a million old boats in there.
Your discussion re sea travel made me think of the Solutrean Hypotheses, which makes loads of sense if you know how the Inuit live along the sea ice. Crossing the Atlantic 20,000 years ago? Why not!
One reason for the lack of boats being found may be that they were disassembled upon arrival. The wood may have been used to build the first shelters used by the settlers. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, boats were built in the Ohio River area, used to carry goods to New Orleans, and disassembled with the wood sold along with the trade goods.
I love it. 5 min in and ur dangling the sea transport in pre history over us without ever saying the word boat
“If we have seen farther than others, it is only because we have stood upon the shoulders of giants.” (Bernard of Chartres [Circa 1100s])
Little evidence of prehistoric maritime or coastal seafaring exists because the most common type of watercraft employed by our ancient ancestors were made of hide stretched over frames. We could look at the hide canoes (or kayaks) used by Inuit peoples within recent historical (and possibly living) memory, many of which were quite large. For remnants closer to home (best employed for river travel) Britain still retains possession of many iconic examples. Just look at that charming Northumbrian spokeshaver's coracle your eccentric uncle used as a guitar cozy back in the sixties.
And naturally, that very same uncle painted his coracle in "telephone black and white white."
I love Flanders & Swann!
@@rosemcguinn5301 ; - )
The Inuit distinguish their large, multi-passenger ocean-going boats (umiaks) from their single and double-person inshore kayaks. They are still being built today, using traditional designs, with the exception of using metal screws and fittings, and sometimes an outboard motor. They usually range from 6 to 10 metres in length, but a Greenlandic account from the 18th century describes one of 18 metres. They sometimes employ sails made from seal intestines, but being keel-less, they cannot tack. They are quite seaworthy, and are still preferred for whaling in the western arctic because whales can hear the distinctive sound of metal boats, but not the sealskin umiaks.
@@philpaine3068 59 feet in length! Wow
@@rosemcguinn5301 That one was definitely exceptional, and we only have one reference to it from a Danish missionary. 6-10 metres is, as far as I know, the long-established standard. Umiaks are still popular because they weigh as a little as one fifth as much as any "modern" vessel of the same size, and have the advantage of being made from local materials ---- in a place where every import from the south of Canada has extremely high prices (this month, a single head of lettuce goes for 5.67 C$ in the capital, Iqaluit. That would be £3.29 UK, or €3.82 ---- and it would not be a good quality lettuce). Umiaks can also be moved easily over snow and ice.
On the subject of primitive shark fishing. I was brought up on the Southern tip of Africa, home of the Great White shark documentaries, and all us kids played in the Southern Ocean. For my generation, it was surfing, spear fishing and scuba diving. My father's generation did not have that gear. They went shark fishing for fun! They'd get hold of a sheet of galvanized steel roofing and convince a steam roller driver to flatten it for them, then bend the ends up into a boat shape, joining the ends with pieces of plank, bent over nails and road tar caulking--then go shark fishing! They'd use a parafin can as a float and when the shark was tuckered out--drag it ashore. (I don't believe it was huge Great Whites that they were catching. Probably the more moderately sized sharks that we saw when spear fishing.)
I was surprised when I was reading cultural geography for my degree, the things my mother knew about medicine. She was born at home, as had all of our line before her. She laughed about my ignorance of the uses of queen Anne's lace, and other hedge row herbs. She had always said to beware the pennyroyal. I was 23 before I knew what that meant!
Taiwan (Formosa) is clearly visible from Yonaguni, one of the Southern Ryukus - and vice versa. From Yonaguni the other Southern Ryukyu Islands are visible at half way points. Reaching the gap to Northern Ryukyus would have been by drift on the Kuroshio. Polynesians took this route a few thousand years later.
Specie don't evolve then find an environment, they inhabit an environment then evolve. Genes show Denisovans evolved in the mountains. Neanderthal evolved in forests and the anatomy shows an ambush predator. We evolved around water. We're the only hominid that throws overarm and we're unique in the use of projectiles - derived from our over arm swimming style. We can spear fish, which requires an over arm throw. We gravitate to water. Every sapien site we know that dates prior to the Younger Dryas is within a few tens of miles of a coastline. The earliest we know of comes from a cave 30 miles from the Atlantic ocean in Morocco. I cannot fathom us not using watercraft from the get go.
That's a great comment Daniel, thanks.
Kudos for mentioning the Pesse Cannoe. It was obviously not capable of crossing oceans (although it would definitely float). But before an intelligent ape would go to that length to create something so very specific (probably fishing or hunting in swampy areas like Doggerland), it would have tied together several logs to cross bodies of water. Large and sturdy enough rafts of well-placed logs could go very far.
And obviously, of those, only (fossilised) treetrunks might remain. With sea-level much lower, virtually all of those are at the bottom of the ocean.
Just bumped into your channel. Very interesting, who knew I liked archaeology?
One thing that strikes me is the outstanding sound quality. Everything about it. Both the technicals and the voices themselves. Super clear and intimate, both sides great, lovely pacing, no rushing, reasonable modulation. Great stuff. Thanks.
It's now January, 2023, and I've just come across your channel. I've been a big fan of all things paleo for thirty years or so, ever since I read Clan of the Cave Bear and the subsequent books. Of course, these books by Jean Auel, supposedly set about 35,000 years ago, were wildly off in any number of ways, but what she had intuited and communicated through story, was that humans traveling and trading and living in complicated societies in the much more distant past than had been admitted until rather recently by academics. The books were enormous leaps of imagination! She imagined and explained exactly how the very first dog was brought into human family life, how soap was first discovered, how boats were made and used for travel and trade, how a horse could have been seen as trasportation, rather than a creature for roasting and feasting, and so much more. I like to reread the series every decade or so, not for accuracy, but for her ability to so fully inhabit human society of the long gone ago. (Anyhow, I have subscribed, and look forward to more of your broadcasts. I do hope you have continued your discussions over the last few years, even though we are no longer confined to quarters.)
Supposedly an Eskimo showed up in Scotland hundreds of years ago. Never underestimare the power of getting lost.
Oscar Speck paddled a folding kayak from Germany to Australia in the 1930s looking for work,he arrived in Australia just in time to be interned due to the war. Probably why he is little known. Of course pre historic man was as,if not more,capable of doing the same.
Look him up,it's interesting.
After Kayaking for months, imagine his surprise when he found out what had been happening in the world ... euphoric emotions turned into one of the biggest disappointments in history
@@douginorlando6260 He stayed in Australia after the war . I wonder whether he ever flew back to Germany to visit . Imagine flying over half a planet that you took years to paddle across . Though he did have a sail on his kayak .
In love poetry of previous centuries one point of praise of the beloved was 'breath like honey'. Presumably because this was different to the breath of most people.
It's remarkable how this actually resonates with the theories Buckminster Fuller developed about the history of mankind originating in seafaring. He developed a complete picture of human prehistory focused on the sea as the link. He even went so far as to read the story of Adam and Eve as a myth based on a sailor (adam) developing a ribbed ship (eVe) that was able to carry load across the open sea, thus learning from the sea (embodied by Naga, the sea snake god, think waves) that the earth is a sphere (apple) that one could travel around any way to get back where one left... I always found those theories intriguing, amazing to see it supported by archaeology!
I think there's a Jeremy Wade fishing special where he catches a shark in a dugout canoe. The native dude lures it in by slapping the water with a weird paddle-spoon thing.
Perhaps the hanging gardens of Babylon included banana trees that had been obtained from Malaysia
Banana boat?
I got such a chuckle envisioning an early ancestor trying to pull in a shark into a canoe! Or netting one? 🤣 which begs to ask... Hooks?? Line?? Did they have the ability to make nets? From what? Or were they precursor’s to Bull Riding and just hopped out of the boat and onto the back of Tuna and stone axed it to death?
Dare we say that overall, we have underestimated our earliest ancestor’s. And as you said, opened a can of worms.. no pun intended as we do not know what they used for bait 😄 but makes our minds travel down many a rabbit hole!
It also brought to mind the Disney Movie Moana and how she discovered her ancestors were wayfarers. Not sure the date her wayfarer’s were but.... it is based on the Polynesian Indigenous people.
Plenty of stoneage hooks and lines and nets. We fish from canoes on the high sea. Spearing tuna is no problem. We use a wooden clubs to dispatch tuna. Sometimes you bull ride a tigershark. I use polynesian navigation technique since I was a kid.
Thank you guys, great mix, fascinating and very enjoyable!
Our pleasure!
I absolutely love each and every thing you guys cover. You are absolutely bad ass! I wish I knew you or people like you guys!!! Thank you for sharing our similar interest topic gossips I can't get enough 👍🙏🙏🙏🤓
Wouldn’t the topography, weather patterns, tides, and land access have looked very different then than they do now?
Yes that what I thought!
There are a lot of artifacts to be found along the 30' depth contour underwater, and sea level has fluctuated back and forth as much as 400' or more. Humans tend to habitate close to shorelines. I think ancient mariners were far more proficient than we have yet verified.
Thanks for the show. (and the links 😎)
Our pleasure!
Early language in Homo Erectus is particuarly argued by Daniel Everett - One of his indicators is Homo Erectus remains (tools I think) found on socrata 200 miles from Yemen and 100 miles or so from Africa - I've tried to find coroboration of this (google), but can't find anything except in Spanish. He argues (and rightly so I think) that you can't make such a journey by mistake and that you would need language to organize - "boat" building - stocking up food - organizing etc - I have twice crossed the Atlantic in a home-made polynesian catamaran and can indeed confirm it needed a lot of language (and indeed a lot of bad language) - Cheers
Fascinating! Incredible to think humans have been here for 1 million years. Have you ever read Jack London's Tales of the South Seas? There's an incredible story about a man who picks up an islander who says he can help him navigate to his boat without a map. It's a staggering account and really explains a lot of what you are ruminating on.
Sadness and laughter are close in emotions and used in plays to strike emotions without being completely sad. Nervous laughter about death is more common and normal than people realize. On the hobbit getting to the island I sarcastically asked a very smart person that said they could not have used boats if maybe big birds hauled them there for food source. He did not catch the sarcasm, I wondered if he thought it was possible.
Really great episode, so glad you could talk about ancient maritime archaeology. Just had something to say about people travelling to islands they cannot see, there is a phenomena where by the haze on a sunny day can allow one to see around the earth's curvature slightly, could be how people made to far off islands
Megiddo is well worth visiting, although it's a bit tricky without a car. The original excavators were frankly rather casual, especially about preservation, but there are some very interesting parts, and a good visitor centre. (It's not technically pre-historic, given that it's the site of the first documented battle in history. (Thanks, Thutmoses III.)
Great 🥰
Thanks guys. Interesting and thought provoking. They seem to be more tuned into the natural environments. Perhaps they followed migrating whale or bird populations and with larger land masses ocean currents were different than they are today. I forget who said this but we are a species with amnesia. So much knowledge has been lost over time but without that knowledge we wouldn't be here today. Just a thought.
Et Voila - trading over distance!
You guys are amazing
Epic idea about Homo Erectus speaking, otherwise how would they plan to travel to an unseen place? Interesting point
You guys have the most soothingly posh voices too - very nice to listen to
Keep up the great work!!!
Thanks Connor!
Banana trees are very durable. You can split one in half down to the bulb and grow two! They can travel also believe it or not! We grow them in Texas so I'm betting they could grow them in Israel!
The maritime archaic cultures were hunting seals, large fish, and great auks. By the time of the woodland cultures, long sea journeys were feasible.
A most dramatic prehistoric feat of navigation was necessary for the settlement of Australia by human beings. At all times in the last million years, Australia has been separated from any land to the north by broad, deep channels. The distance from Timor to the Australian shore is 500km, a distance unchanged even during minimum sea levels. Accidental crossings are extremely unlikely. The channel is very deep and sustains a powerful and rapid current --- any accidental drifter would be swept westward into the Indian Ocean. A seaworthy vessel manned by experienced navigators would be required. Archaeological evidence indicates that Australia was settled 65,000 years ago.
You guys are amazing. New to the channel. Absolutely subscribed
Welcome aboard!
Congrats Amanda! Gentleman I am listening while preparing the Christmas dinner, I love your show, Merry Christmas. A couple of theories, Desperation was the motivation to risk everything, if you have nothing left to lose…. either from an invading tribe because your current island is closer to the mainland, natural disaster, disease, famine, caused these people to risk everything, similar to Easter Island where they supposedly ran out of trees because of their obsession with building monuments, or to the Viking Invasions, although they knew the UK and Ireland existed. Another thing, I saw a documentary about prehistoric migration in Polynesia and it ran computer simulations of prevailing winds and if I remember correctly during El Niño years the prevailing winds made it possible to reach remote islands, food for thought. Thank you for the wonderful content.
Regarding going by boat, the question seems to be, what knowledge and set of skills do you need to have in order to decide to risk it?
Certainly, for example: knowledge of weather patterns. Because you wouldn't want to chance the trip unless you were fairly certain you weren't going to run into any huge storms along the way.
Hi guys-Patricia from Dublin
At last you said it. Underestimated. Vastly so.
200 generations in one spot, still living there today...!? Astounding. How can people be so stable for so long and yet still scraping by for scraps the entire time...
A 2015 study found the average American lives 18 miles from their mother.
And I've seem values of 68-72% of Americans live in or near the place they grew up.
The broad range of accents across the UK is also an indication of how little generations of people have moved without a severe impetus to do so.
I am 70yrs. old and have always thought our professional assessment of earlier human capabilities has been way off. It seemed obvious?! Another tell tale fact that bothered me was that, all the pictures showing how early man may have looked , depicted them as ugly! Modern forensic re-creations , which are fairly accurate , show them much more like us today.
Tried Bananas flours and taro, etc, you need food for long voyages on an outrigger ship.
The banana producers simply subcontracted the transport to…. Wait for it ….wait for it…l ANCIENT ALIENS…😉
But you’d have thought they’d give us at least a couple of tips on dental hygiene, wouldn’t you?
Excellent presentation, loved it 👍
🤣
YES!!!!
we have no bananas.
Bananas would ripen en route.
dont forget bannana trees have a corm, which can be transplanted and a seed in each bannana 6.22
I'm stone head that's for sure
I believe the stone circles and other megalithic sites are related to navigation, both land and sea. If you think about it, if the ocean was 400ft or so lower during the ice age, the distances between continents was much less.
Thanks Randy. However, the megalithic sites were built WAY after the ice ages ended. The last ice age ended about 11,500 years ago. Megalithic building in Europe lasted from approx 4,500BC to 2,500BC.M😊
@@ThePrehistoryGuys I was thinking about the earliest sites we’ve found so far, such as Gobekli Tepe. I think they were making stuff out of ice blocks long long ago.
@@randycompton5230 But that's in Turkey. Ice sheets didn't extend down there. Moreover Göbekli Tepe isn't a megalithic site - it's a settlement. The pillars we see today were roof supports inside a building when in use.
the polynesians said they would follow the migratory birds that followed the currants at certain times of year , they knew the birds flying of across the sea were heading for land and they followed
they were masters of their enviroment . like the dove for noah or ravens for vikings
On the west coast of Ireland men hunted basking sharks in currachs wood frame boats covered in leather
Sailors went to Australia 65000 years ago.
The people who made that wooden structure more than 400 000 years ago in Southern Africa were likely able to dug out a canoe from a tree trunk.
Bananas could have been growing in the Middle East/Near East prior to the desertification.
There are after all Palm Trees in Ireland are there not?
Nabatean trade routes were from India to the Mediterranean.
I can’t get a bananas from the grocery store to home without banging them up a bit.
There are possibly two ways to see this.
Inventing boats to get from A to B, or, using boats as a daily way of life. The former will only reveal crude boats in the archaeological record, the later will show more developed boats.
I read somewhere that Polynesians could hang their feet over the canoe sides and feel if land was near!
During my internet travels in the last year, I saw a video reproduction of what an acient would have sounded like do to the size of a 'piece' of him that they had related to speech. The said "You would think this guy had a deep commanding tone due to his looks, when in fact, his voice would have been high pitched almost 'screaching'."
In the general case it's risky to assume that two land masses between which travel is currently oceanic could not have been populated without oceanic travel. Particularly in some parts of the world, islands and seas can emerge and disappear more than once in the sort of time periods we're looking at here. The British Isles were connected to what is now Scandinavia because most of the North Sea was actually land, to take one well known example, within the human era. Of course as well as sea levels having been mobile, so has ice cover, both of which wreak major topological changes.
Furthermore, it is not necessary to have had a contiguous land (or ice) bridge at some past era. If islands emerged in sequence, short hops could have been made to travel long distances across what will later appear to be unbroken ocean. Of course this does not apply on the timescale of the Polynesian colonisation of the Pacific, but in prehistory it must have happened more than once.
@Lessons in Logic But sea level is not the only significant variable; there are several others. And your opening statement is a gratuitous assertion, not borne out by the reasoning in this clip.
@Lessons in Logic
I made no attempt to rebut your claim about sea level mapping, I was pointing out that sea level is not the only explanation of exposed topographic change.
I could have pointed out that it was a non-sequitur to use sea level mapping in support of the nonsensical claim beginning "No one assumes..." but I'm not really writing to convince you, I see that as a lost cause.
I guess I'm posting more in the hope that some of the others reading our interchange will be appropriately skeptical of your pronouncements.
Is your posting handle intentionally ironic, or is the irony accidental?
As for your question about other factors: I'll give any genuinely interested readers (one can always hope!) clues to three of them:
Why are there sea shells embedded in rock strata of the high Himalaya?
Why are there islands in the Pacific which were not there mere decades ago?
How did humans get to North America about 13k years ago (hint: they did not walk on land, nor travel over the sea)
(Incidentally, it is generally considered highly unlikely that Australian aboriginals travelled there by water, despite there seemingly not, during that era, having ever been a contiguous land bridge.)
Thanks. where does Moyjil fit?
Fellows, try rafts. One could not only travel on them, they can be steered, and burned for warmth once one arrives.
Boats could also serve as firewood once you reach land, assuming fire was invented by then.
Maybe you should look at cities under the oceans. There are plenty of them.
The Caribbean. No surprise about Trinidad and Tobago. I was headed there with my boat, to spend a few years in the area, prior to heading for the Pacific. Easterly winds, and currents South Cuba, and Mnorth Venezuela, meant I planned to leave East Caribbean to spend Hurricane Season Sheltering on the West Coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Clockwise Currents into the Gulf Stream or North Cuba Coast, and it's a .insurers trip to the Texas Coast and Florida, and to head back to nice islands once zhurricane Season, you have to cross the Gulf zstream to get to the Bermuda Bank, or edge North in the current North of Cuba, to get onto the Bermuda Bank. I'd planned to relax there for swimming , fishing eating, and drinking wine at anchor. Why. Because the Water in many parts is only around 10 ft deep! So thousands of years ago, people didn't have to sail huge distances, they could have walked them, because they were Dry Land, and many boat trips, could have been to land (bigger islands too) that was clearly visible from where they were leaving. The Caribbean is a great place to Sail around, and with consistent good wind speeds, ancestors that weren't idiots, would have made good use of it imho. Oh and Sharks aren't just deep Sea by any stretch, and lots of them aren't very big. Fishing for them was very common, because Shark Skin was highly prized as Sandpaper. Even today, Pacific islanders catch Tuna from small boats. A livelihood presently being destroyed by French Trawlers Slaughtering Their Tuna Stocks. Such Criminal Irresponsibility tbh, makes me Really Angry. 😡
eta. So Angry Sorry, I forgot to wish you All The Best. Bob .👍🏴
I thought the ancient Polynesians used those stablilizer things that extend from the side of your boat.
The dog with the boy is interesting, there is a extensive prehistoric cult around dogs and burials. Dogs are also gatekeepers for the other realm (Cerberus) the pup helps the boy pass through safely I suppose.
If coastal people mainly took crustaceans and shore fish at first....maybe sneaking up on seal pods on the beach...well, if they ever came across a floating corpse, they might begin to experiment with building skin boats.
I'm totally astounded by the fairly common statement: 'They didn't have boats, so they must drifted across accidentally.'
It's so daft! (A) Drifting is SLOW. (B) If the crossing is 'accidental'--they would not have 'accidentally' loaded the drifting object with sufficient food and water for a long incredibly slow trip! They would not survive.
If bananas were traded 7000 years ago between the middle east and Asia, it makes you wonder on how well connected the ancient world was in comparison to what mainstream archeology states
Perhaps the people traveling long distances across water to relocate had already been fisher people, and over, say, 200 generations of experience making ever better sea craft, they had expanded their fishing grounds right out to the islands, and at some point, maybe on account of population pressure, or just to get away from the in-laws, they moved their whole families over.
Unlikely to be walking from SE to SW Asia, more likely they went by boat. But as well as moving dried fruit, they could have moved plants - not every attempted introduction of a new plant is going to succeed. Someone could have been growing bananas for a few years until they lost them in a harsh winter.
There are lots of contemporary and even current accounts of people surviving stranded at sea for day, weeks and months surviving on rain water, fish and captured birds. If you had a vessel that was unlikely to sink and a water carrying system that was fairly good early humans or even ancient humans could travel the seas readily and extensively. Especially if these sailors understood weather patterns and if they sailed at a time there were more surface fish and more birds willing alight on the floating log(s) ignorant of the fact they were destined to be caught, strangled, their blood drunk and their flesh dried in the sun to be consumed at leisure.
How did the Guanches reach Gran Canaria?
The fact that Japan can't be seen from the mainland isn't really relevant, they would have had fishing boats that regularly sailed out and back occasionally getting blown out to sea and noticing Japan before finding their way home. There would also be explorers who would sail out as far as they dared before returning and as boats improved someone would discover Japan and it would take about no time for settlers to get organized, it's free land!
In every case I can think of, except the poles maybe, the intention of exploring was to settle the land particularly if it was uninhabited and fertile so guessing that there was land over the horizon was unnecessary since they were going to go out there and find out for sure even when they lost explorers at sea. It is human nature, actually just the nature of living things , to expand the territory of the species to the point that some individuals and groups migrate to their deaths but it means that the species expands to every habitable place it can conceivably get to even with deadly risks.
Of course, if they noticed bird activity or cloud formations that indicated land it would be a priority, they were experts at using nature's signposts but many explorers set out with no indication of what is beyond the horizon because they want to discover the unknown.
Weren't the Ryukyu Islands part of the Asian mainland before "the Flood"? Or maybe I have the wrong time period?
20 feet less sea level and the Caribbean is a whole different place. Tortuga island and most of the way to it would've been above water for miles and miles. Sure it doesn't point right to Cuba but it would've made the keys 40-50 miles longer. Not sure past it but its still shallow for a ways. How scared would you be if you could see bottom but not land? You'd know it was coming eventually else it would get real deep. I've walked 2 miles out into the ocean and it never got up to my chest, kicked a shark or a ray and came back with my calf abraded to ribbons. Anyway... Small wonder they came from the North. Maybe they followed the manatees out? They have a seasonal migration of a few hundred miles.
Was there not a dna survey on bones from cheddar gorge and the nearby village and there were distinct dna similarities
Most academics in the relevant fields are intellectual and actual landlubbers
Seafaring sprang into existence fully developed, like mushrooms.
Hawaiins still deep sea fish in one man cannoes today. Yes there very modern versions these days but there's a lot of places where you don't have to go out that far to fish deep waters.
Those long ago guys didn't need ships or boats, they had these giant birds they rode all around on.
Through the smugness gems of mediocrity shine
I think that assuming that the ocean currents were the same 50000 years ago or any other period were the same as today is not believable. The Ice Ages lowered the sea levels by 200m and that would change the currents.
Hi Ben, Rupert here. The research relating to the ocean currents was specific to RyuKyu Islands and based on analysis of sediments. Having said that, I totally agree that it seems to be a bold statement.
A tangible link
How can you say they wouldn't have perceived them as different?
I think that dispensing with terms like primitive might help. The facts are clear. People got to these distant places by sea. How they did it, we do not know, but they did. The proof is incontrovertible . We have not been able to accept that facilities like language, may be far more ancient than we thought, or that intelligence was far more advanced than we give credit for. It is because of this that I am of the opinion that the Americas was reached far earlier than is thought now. The idea that the Americas would not be peopled far earlier than we currently have hard evidence for, seems preposterous .
Bananas could be carried. Grip 'em by the husk.
If people were skinning animals, and stretching and drying hides, then they would know how wind could catch one, even blowing one away. It isn't a great leap to making a sail...
Thor Heyerdal did prove it's possible to be a seanomad on a raft.
Prehistoric boats were made of things that don't last, even wooden ships of the nineteenth century are mostly gone.
Making a boat is not all that hard, any people by the water would figure it out. It almost seems that Homo is driven to do so. I spent ~25 years enthralled to boat building.
Of course they had sails. Stand up in anything that floats and you are a sail. I once sailed a rubber dinghy with a failed motor about a mile and landed precisely where I wanted by standing up, holding my arms out and angling my body to the wind.
As well as birds, stationary clouds indicate islands.
Banana tree in a pot? 😉
What kind of sharks were they eating? They do come in VERY close to shore, depending on their size and species.
Absolutely right. I did a bit more research and certainly modern sharks can come as shallow as 1ft of water. Not to mention bull shark attacks in rivers.
So I think we can abandon shark eating as a evidence of far ocean sailing.
wonder what is the oldest cave art of boats ?
It's no big mystery that certain materials that ancient peoples utilized wouldn't survive. Wood, reed, leaves, animal skin & most organic materials available to them would decompose especially in wet, humid environments. Stone & bone & clay & metal is what survives to be found later in most cases.
Jesus, they probably took trees back and planted them, that would be the most sensible thing to do, and it was Papua New Guinea where Musa acuminata subspecies banksii had been cultivated for 7,000 years. The Papuans might be 'hunter/gatherers' but they know how to garden.
I wonder if one should say these people haven't moved in 200 generations. Perhaps it might be better said, that there is an individual (s) there who have not moved, but many many others did - all across the continent. A slightly different way of looking at it