Humans in S America 22000 Years Ago?

[thesummerqueen]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn23...s-ago.html

[Minimalist]

Don't know if they are talking about Pedra Furada , but,

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

Pedra Furada includes a collection of rock shelters used for thousands of years by human populations. The first excavations yielded artifacts with Carbon-14 dates of 48,000 to 32,000 years BP. Repeated analysis has confirmed this dating, carrying the range of dates up to 60,000 BP.[2] Archaeological levels that are well excavated yield dates between 32,160 ± 1,000 years BP and 17,000 ± 400 BP. The collection of stone age artifacts includes darts and atlatls but no arrows or bows.

Because of the Eastern Coast of South America location scholars are beginning to look to Africa as the logical origination point for the Pedra Furada population. Makes sense really. The winds and currents are right.

[Anomalocaris]

Genetic and linguistic evidence hints at a separate population that arrived in South America between 20000-30000 years ago. But they belong to the same genetic lineage as the rest of the euroasia population. ie they descended from the same East African population that left Africa to go to euroasia 60000 years ago, not a separate population in west Africa that might have taken any Atlantic route.

Any descendants of a successful African migration from west Africa to eastern America will have Y chromosome that stick Out like a sore thumb in the general milieu of Native American gene pool.

[Minimalist]

We don't know that any of the pre-clovis populations survived. Just another hiccup in the story of man.

Dennis Stanford makes a compelling case for Solutrean contact prior the the Last Glacial Maximum, too. Geneticists can't find evidence of that.... but the tools are still being found in Virginia and the Chesapeake area.

[Anomalocaris]

I will be amazed if any sizeable population of Africans did make it to an unpeopled South America, and despite the climate on that continent always remaining hospitable in large areas, fail to leave any descendants or genetic evidence in later populations.

[Minimalist]

Science frequently amazes us....unlike religion which can amuse us at those times when it isn't making us nauseous.

[dazzn]

Or maybe a population of Eastern persons entered the Americas earlier than thought.

I doubt personally that people sailed or rafted or whatever over the Atlantic. Whilst sea levels in that era would have been lower due to the Ice Age, this wouldn't have affected the southern Atlantic that much. If we only discovered the maritime technology for long-distance ocean travel in the 1400s or so, then I doubt some of us in paleolithic times could raft thousands of miles in that period safely.

[Minimalist]

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.

[Anomalocaris]

The notion that nasu tengara was never connected to mainland is not as certain as it seems to have been presented, nor is it as relevent as it is presented. The islands of nasu tengara form a violently active volcanic archipelago. The straits separating them from eachother and form other islands almost certainly hosted numerous now sunken volcanic islands and volcanic land bridges, similar to the thrice sunken and thrice risen krakatau. Even if not directly connected, the islands of nasu tengara almost certainly enjoyed stepping stone volcanic islands to other parts of indonesian islands such that progressive travel did not require anything more than perhaps axcidental vegetation mat over very short over water distances.

Also, as was revealed after krakatau eruption, large caldera forming eruptions near the sea in the Indonesian archipelago, such as in the straits between of Bali in question, form vast rafts of floating pumice stone hundreds of acres in size, that remain intact for month or years after the eruption. Many rafts from krakatau floated clean to Africa with wild life hitching rides, including some which appeareny carried bones of humans that lived for awhile on the rafts. So it also seem possible homo erectus could also have hitched rides on volcanic pumice rafts in the aftermath of large caldera forming eruptions in the various straits of Indonesia.

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The accidental crossing of humans across the Atlantic is also not impossible. Old world monkeys definitely crossed the Atlantic, probably on storm driven vegetation mats, 40 million years ago, and went on to establish the entire population of new world monkeys. It does not seem impossible humans could have made Accidental crossing the same way.

[The Grand Nudger]

The winds and currents are right.

Fantastically demonstrated by Thor Heyerdahl when he and his crew built and -drifted- the Ra (a grass "sail"boat) from Africa to S. America (even though genetics later eradicated any chance of the hypothesis for which this project was undertaken to be true).

The technology existed and was very well developed much farther back then we previously imagined. Now, whether or not it was used, that's harder to pin down. It's been noted that grass boats in Africa and grass boats in S. America are remarkably similar - whether or not this has to do with the mechanics of what makes a boat a good boat or cultural transfer is far less vigorously established. I believe the current paradigm is that the oldest boats we have are 7-10k years old (logboats...and that says something) but some reasons that we don't find older boats are there, specifically in the case of boats made out of wood and grass. We do have plenty of stone "mystery tools" that -can- certainly be used to manufacture boats that are much older......but any concrete evidence that they actually -were- used to make boats...meh again.

IMHO, the issue of a means of conveyance..a boat, is much less troubling for any atlantic crossing than the logistics involved the farther in time we go back. Where did they get and stockpile the amount of food and water required and how would they have stored it? Why would they have undertaken such a trip (specifically..why leave a place in which so much food and water can be collected and set aside for the journey? A place in which such a craft could be manufactured?) and who backed it (again, specifically...who was just "ok": with watching all that industry and agriculture disappear into the horizon never to return so long ago?). The "Lost Fisherman" doesn't work for me. Fishermen load their boats with fish, not water. In fact, the last thing a fisherman is likely to want to see is a boat full of water. Planning for a long trip, I can't imagine why anyone would just expect to find food and water (though what I can imagine and what others so long ago expected..not the same thing). What scenario are we painting here, with an early atlantic crossing in the south?