Billy,
I think of the ancient Polynesians (but like yesterday compared to 100K yrs). They pulled off amazing navigational feats by reading the waves, the color of the sea, far off clouds of a certain shape, etc. Some primitive "boat" with some paddles might be able to navigate to Crete in a relatively small sea. Good point about the existence of females and an actual settlement. It was probably a deliberate migration. Who knows, perhaps another penal colony like Australia. Put the bums on a couple of logs and let them be eaten by sharks, but the joke is on the mainlanders. The bums survived to make stone tools still being talked about 100,000 years later. Chris _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 4:58 PM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: [RC] [ RC ] Proof found of ability of early humans to navigate open waters Chris : Given the date, well over 100,000 years ago, that says something about the mental capacity of our remote ancestors. Very advanced and also VERY conservative. I once did a study of ancient boat building styles and, by modern standards, quite elementary.. Not until the Egyptian / Sumerian era were there actual long distance craft with sails, etc. Well, could be several centuries earlier, boats are perishable and it is rare for any to survive from that long ago. Who knows ? Maybe there were sea going boats in 5000 BC, well before 3000 BC. But to stretch this idea back to over 100,000 BC ? Could be that the humans got to Crete by happenstance. This takes place with animals when they get caught in storms and end up hundreds or even thousands of miles from where they started because they were walking around on a natural log jam and, oooops, the wind kicks up like crazy and away they go. So, thinking about it, I'm not all that sure that they got to Crete voluntarily. But they may have wanted to get back. What would seal the deal would be finding trade goods from the mainland. Or finding stone tools that were known from later styles on the mainland than the first ones, just discovered. But at a minimum the humans persevered in their new environment, enough to form a colony and survive. That means women were present and that says there is a chance they got there on purpose. I've read speculations to the effect that if the cave artists could paint the way they did, which is pretty sophisticated, this implies modern forms of intelligence. Maybe, if this can be nailed down with no room for a loophole, then boat building might also imply modern cognitive skill levels, too. That allows for the possibility of almost anything WAAAAAY before most archaeologists until now have said was possible. But the cave artists were active if I remember, no earlier than the ca 30,000 BC era. This pushes the time line back really far beyond that. Trying to sort it all out. Did they have some sort of organized religion if they also were capable of organizing an expedition ? If they survived in an alien environment did they have rudimentary medical knowledge ? But no point in pushing this too far. Like I just said, if they did have boats, not just a cluster or logs, then there was very little innovation for the next 100,000 years plus. One previous period of almost no innovation lasted a quarter of a million years after the invention of stone tools. The style of the tools remained unchanged for that long. Why, then, do humans sometimes preserve the past to the extent that they do ? Why, on the contrary, are there periods of fantastic inventiveness ? What explains these contrasts ? The answers would seem to be pretty darned basic. But why don't we already have the answers ? Might tell us something important for the here-and-now. Billy ================================================= message dated 1/3/2011 1:25:59 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, [email protected] writes: I would have never guessed that pre homo sapiens (or perhaps Neanderthals) would have had the ability to build an ocean-going ship and sail it purposefully to a destination, although the purposeful navigation part may be over-speculative. Chris _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: Monday, January 03, 2011 1:17 PM To: [email protected] Cc: [email protected] Subject: [RC] Proof found of ability of early humans to navigate open waters ca 130,000 BC Straits Times / Singapore Jan 3, 2011 Early humans could navigate, evidence in Greece ATHENS - ARCHAEOLOGISTS on the Greek island of Crete have found startling evidence that early humans could navigate across open water thousands of years earlier than previously thought, officials said on Monday. A team of US and Greek archaeologists reached that conclusion after finding stone tools and axes dating from at least 130,000 years ago on Crete, which was already an island at the time, the Greek culture ministry said. 'The findings not only prove marine travel in the Mediterranean existed tens of thousands of years prior to what was known until today, but they also change calculations about early man's cognitive abilities,' the ministry said. It noted that the chiseled shards found in the areas of Plakia and Preveli in 2008 and 2009, and attributed to the Homo heidelbergensis and Homo erectus species, 'constitute the most ancient sign of early navigation worldwide.' Greek archaeologists working with the Athens-based American School of Classical Studies had originally been searching for the remains of Stone Age settlements in the island's southwest dating to 10,000 BCE. Conclusive evidence of human habitation on Crete had so far been established for the Neolithic period, up to 7,000 BCE. Instead, the tools discovered could be up to 700,000 years old, the ministry said. -- AFP -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org <http://radicalcentrism.org/> -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org <http://radicalcentrism.org/> -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org
