Post by blacky on Feb 1, 2010 4:00:52 GMT 10
130,000 years ago, Ancient Hominids May Have Been Seafarers
Ancient hominids may have been seafarers
130,000 year-old Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go 'out of Africa'
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.
“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.
This ties in nicely with the "wet phases" of the Sahara, and human and/or H.Erectus/Neanderthal migration into and out of Africa:
Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa
"...northwest Africa reveals three periods during the past 192,000 years when the central Sahara/Sahel contained C3 plants (likely trees), indicating substantially wetter conditions than at present."
At least the wet phases help explain where the raw material for rafts came from. The dating of the stone age tools to 130,000 years ago also means accepting these ancient hominids were indeed using rafts to reach these Med. islands.
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53219/title/Ancient_hominids_may_have_been_seafarers
Ancient hominids may have been seafarers
130,000 year-old Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go 'out of Africa'
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.
“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.
This ties in nicely with the "wet phases" of the Sahara, and human and/or H.Erectus/Neanderthal migration into and out of Africa:
Wet phases in the Sahara/Sahel region and human migration patterns in North Africa
"...northwest Africa reveals three periods during the past 192,000 years when the central Sahara/Sahel contained C3 plants (likely trees), indicating substantially wetter conditions than at present."
At least the wet phases help explain where the raw material for rafts came from. The dating of the stone age tools to 130,000 years ago also means accepting these ancient hominids were indeed using rafts to reach these Med. islands.
www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53219/title/Ancient_hominids_may_have_been_seafarers
Happy New Years Everybody!!!
