Humans in S America 22000 Years Ago?

[dazzn]

http://home.vicnet.net.au/~auranet/marin...index.html

One of the most significant finds in the history of archaeology is the discovery that hominins of more than 850 000 years ago managed to cross the sea to colonise a number of Indonesian islands. Nusa Tenggara, the islands east of Bali, have never been connected to either Asia or Australia, but they were found to have been occupied by Homo erectus as well as by several endemic species of Stegodonts (extinct elephants) early in the Ice Age. Until recently, it had been assumed that the first sea crossings occurred no more than 60 000 years ago.

These crossings of several sea barriers involved the use of watercraft, because sea straits cannot be crossed without propellant, so this was the first time in human history that our ancestors entrusted their destiny to a contraption designed to harness the energies of nature.

Is that across an ocean though?

It could be that lower sea levels permitted crossing, by means of pools or shallow stretches connecting islands.

Also, why is there no evidence of homo erectus rafts in other areas? unless these homo erectus were super erectus, or were the key in eventual modern human intelligence.

[Minimalist]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line

We are not going to find direct evidence of boats. Boats are not made of stone. They are generally organic materials like wood, rope, animal skins. These items do not preserve well in humid climates and that is where you use boats.

So, a little deductive reasoning is required. If ancient man could not walk to a place and did not have the ability to fly ( I assume we agree there?) that really only leaves cross-water travel.

Water transport remained the easiest and cheapest way to travel until the building of the railroads in the 19th century. Think about this, who has the easier task? A man in a canoe paddling along a river or a man walking alongside the river?

[The Grand Nudger]

That's when we start to look for impetus and industry required to manufacture the boats. We've found it earlier the harder we look, granted, and like you said, if we know someone got there and the only way was by water - laying aside a long swim...they floated there somehow. That's why I think the issue of boats is the lest pressing of the issue. Why and when and how did they leave, what did they hope to achieve (if anything), etc?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not looking for a factory, but a population sufficient to cover the landscape given enough time....that's going to be more than Bob and Steve straddling a log, you know? Any seafaring founder culture deserves serious amounts of cred, they didn't just paddle out into the blue one day (granted, that may have been the practical effect), it's something altogether more impressive. Take the guys who decided to joyride all the way to Hawaii. Badasses, every one of them.

[Minimalist]

Unfortunately marine archaeology is just about the most expensive way to do things and rising sea levels have inundated ancient coastlines. Plenty of interesting artifacts have been pulled up from Doggerland and more recently the Chesapeake Bay.

http://tywkiwdbi.blogspot.com/2012/03/ne...trean.html

[The Grand Nudger]

Indeed. Speaking of the opposite, when waters dry up we find treasure troves. A lake down the road from where I grew up - dried up- and we learned that we'd been fishing on top of an entire village that - to our surprise- was a fishing village. Previously we didn't think of the natives in that area as being very keen of the water (though we knew that boat building was widespread in the time and general region), largely because we never found any settlements of the edge of it. This little drought explained why..they were, in fact, very...very keen on the water - to keen, apparently. The thing that surprised the establishment the most was the level of sophistication of these boats - what with not imagining that these particular natives built any boats at all - so much so that the discovery of all of these archaic period canoes was described as correcting some previously held ideas not just about the people in question, but about archaic period boat building in general in the region.

http://www.academicroom.com/article/arch...ke-florida

[Anomalocaris]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Line

We are not going to find direct evidence of boats. Boats are not made of stone. They are generally organic materials like wood, rope, animal skins. These items do not preserve well in humid climates and that is where you use boats.

So, a little deductive reasoning is required. If ancient man could not walk to a place and did not have the ability to fly ( I assume we agree there?) that really only leaves cross-water travel.

Water transport remained the easiest and cheapest way to travel until the building of the railroads in the 19th century. Think about this, who has the easier task? A man in a canoe paddling along a river or a man walking alongside the river?

We also know that accidental overwater travel by otherwise nonaquatic animals, resulting in the founding of new populations overseas, even over large tarnsoceanic distances, can and has happened. So the fact that it could have happened does mean therefore there was nautical technology accompanying any instances where it did happen.

[Minimalist]

I recall reading a paper some time ago where the bare minimum to found a successful new "colony" for want of a better word was 28 females of child bearing age. Interesting stuff. I wonder if I can find it again. I'll look around. Anyway, no way in hell you can get that "accidentally."

[The Grand Nudger]

It's actually a tough number to pin down and depends upon the genetics of the people involved. Better distribution- less people required. We got interested in it again as we considered "space colonies".

On a related note, taking the american indians and their genetics into account - some reserachers have suggested that it could have been as low as 70 in their case..
http://www.livescience.com/289-north-ame...ludes.html

[Anomalocaris]

I recall reading a paper some time ago where the bare minimum to found a successful new "colony" for want of a better word was 28 females of child bearing age. Interesting stuff. I wonder if I can find it again. I'll look around. Anyway, no way in hell you can get that "accidentally."

Old world monkeys did it. Enough old world monkeys accidentally floated to south america betweeen 25-40 million years ago such that they founded the lineage of new world monkeys.

When you are looking at time scale of millions of years, all sorts of freakish, one in a million events would have time to happen.

[The Grand Nudger]

Marsupials took the same trip in the reverse (though we don't imagine they went by water).