Stone Tools Found On Crete Push Back Humans' Maritime History 176
The New York Times reports that stone tools discovered on the Greek island of Crete, and reported last month at an academic conference, are strong evidence for rethinking the maritime capabilities of early humans. The researchers who found the tools (hand-axes, cleavers, and scrapers) estimate them to be at least 130,000 years old; if they're right, humans have been traveling long distances at sea (Crete is 200 miles from the northern African coastline) for at least several tens of thousands of years longer than earlier believed.
Obligatory ... (Score:5, Funny)
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Would that be an African Swallow, or a European Swallow?
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or maybe they used the tools to build a storage cabinet out of something that floats, like wood. Then a flood carried them away, and across the water.
Re:Obligatory ... (Score:5, Funny)
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And there was Light...
enough to see Satan's goatse.cx post.
Creation myths are fun!
First Post (Score:5, Funny)
In a related story, next to one of the axes they found a mast with the words "First Post".
But the amazing part was the -1 Offtopic heading right beside the inscription.
FIRST BOAT (Score:4, Funny)
Re: FIRST BOAT (Score:4, Funny)
Yay, now I'm a troll too
First boast?
Humans are pretty damn clever... (Score:3, Insightful)
...and pretty much have always been.
Humans didn't evolve genetically to this modern technological state, the cleverness has always been inherent.
Re:Humans are pretty damn clever... (Score:4, Insightful)
True. Ancient people were just as intelligent as we are. The only reason this is not more evident is because time has erased the remains of their material culture. It would be more surprising if no one thought of make a raft or boat for tens of thousands of years.
Re:Humans are pretty damn clever... (Score:5, Insightful)
It would be more surprising if no one thought of make a raft or boat for tens of thousands of years.
It's more than that. If they had boats, they had to have some way to navigate and something resembling charts or maps. You don't just launch a raft and hope to get somewhere. Aiming for an island, even a big island, if you're off by a couple degrees you could miss by a hundred miles.
If this discovery holds up, it's going to overturn a lot of what we think we know about human history. Getting around by sea is more than a hairy frat party on a raft. The ocean is rather effective at eliminating the unprepared and unwary. It means packing tools to make repairs at sea, carrying food and water and something to bail out the boat. Doesn't sound like much until you try it with the technology they had. Then come the questions about what compelled them to make a dangerous journey like that in the first place?
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Given that a sailing boat is powered 24 yours a day, we are talking a 4 days journey, not necessarily to the intended destination. No great achievement.
Lets say some scum are after you and your family, so you got on your fishing raft to sail up the coast a few miles, and accidentally lost your steering contrivance. 4 days later, you are in Crete, with your wife and kids, and possibk
Re:Humans are pretty damn clever... (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to miss by a hundred miles with a couple of degree course error, your trip has to be about 3000 miles long, rather than 200. To miss Crete from North Africa would require a sustained course error of about 30 degrees.
In addition, let's not forget the basic navigational techniques of the Polynesians (another Stone Age people who sailed great distances routinely).
The flights of birds can give you clues to the location of land from dozens to hundreds of miles away - some birds fly over water but sleep only on land - if they're flying in a particular direction late in the day, that's a pretty solid hint of land in that direction.
Wave patterns can also show you hints as to the directions of land too far away to see, but plenty close enough to reach.
Plus there's those mountains. Crete's highest peak is visible from about 100 nm. Makes it a lot easier to find when you can see it after you've completed half your voyage.
And finally, consider that there is a chain of islands from Turkey to Crete (as well as an alternate chain from Greece - and Crete's mountain peaks are barely visible from Greece) - if that chain were followed (as by successive waves of migration), the path would be from one island to the next visible island repeated till you hit Crete.
Re:Humans are pretty damn clever... (Score:4, Funny)
Crete's highest peak is visible from about 100 nm.
It took me about thirty seconds to shake nanometers out of my head and come up with nautical miles. "Gosh," thought I, "that's even flatter than Kansas, where the highest peak can be seen from several microns' distance."
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You don't just launch a raft and hope to get somewhere. Aiming for an island, even a big island, if you're off by a couple degrees you could miss by a hundred miles.
Except the Polynesians have a whole culture based on practically nothing but that and a set of taboos. The Hawaiian chain is thousands of kilometers from anything else. How did the firth Hawaiians get there? By aiming in a direction and going until they hit something.
It's also worth noting that right from the beginning, ancient cultures spend a lot of time staring at the stars and memorizing them. It's a very short step to using them for some navigation.
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Yea, but he was going to India.
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True. Ancient people were just as intelligent as we are.
but any Cretin can build a boat.
And what about the Flynn effect [wikipedia.org]?
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They say that, but I'm told all Cretans are liars.
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Ancient people were just as intelligent as we are.
If by this you mean people 10K years ago, you might be correct. If you are thinking anything beyond that there seems to be evidence for active selection for intelligence around the time of the discovery of agriculture, 10-30K years ago.
The tools in the study (no pun intended) are 130K years old.
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Interesting Article But... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Interesting Article But... (Score:5, Funny)
The National Institute of Oceanography states that in studies the sea level of India's coast were about 100m lower about 14k years ago, so extrapolating (a dangerous game I know =) we could say it may be possible that at some point the voyage to Crete was either walkable, or a very short sea voyage.
So you're saying that the oceans didn't even exist 1,529,360 years ago!? I know, snarky, but I couldn't resist. Hey, you said it was a dangerous game!
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Re:Interesting Article But... (Score:4, Informative)
Currently the north shore of Africa is about 200 miles from crete, but what they seem to have failed to take into account (or at least mention in the article) is that in ancient times sea levels were much much lower.
They did. Because the Mediterrean is very deep (average ~1500 metres), especially in the southern part, lowering the shore line doesn't do very much to the distance.
Re:Interesting Article But... (Score:4, Informative)
I just checked: The shelf in front of the african coast is very narrow, and more than 200 m are reached just 20 nm off the shore. Crete itself doesn't have a shelf at all, directly off the coast it goes down to 500 m.
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This is estimated to be due to deglacification around 7k years ago. The National Institute of Oceanography states that in studies the sea level of India's coast were about 100m lower about 14k years ago, so extrapolating (a dangerous game I know =) we could say it may be possible that at some point the voyage to Crete was either walkable, or a very short sea voyage.
Good point. The size of the glaciers in the last ice age peaked about 18k years ago so the sea levels would have been lowest about then (the water had to come from somewhere). So potentially people could have either walked to Crete around that time frame, or it would have been a much easier boat trip so the boats need not have been very sophisticated, maybe no more than rafts.
Just putting forward an alternate explanation, I'm no expert in this area.
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Despite this, they never really say why this changes their view on sea-faring of ancient times. Currently the north shore of Africa is about 200 miles from crete, but what they seem to have failed to take into account (or at least mention in the article) is that in ancient times sea levels were much much lower. This is estimated to be due to deglacification around 7k years ago. The National Institute of Oceanography states that in studies the sea level of India's coast were about 100m lower about 14k years ago, so extrapolating (a dangerous game I know =) we could say it may be possible that at some point the voyage to Crete was either walkable, or a very short sea voyage.
Not if the sea floor was anything like it is today. A drop of 100m/328 ft would get you about 7 miles further off the coast of Africa than with today's sea levels. On the Crete side, the sea floor drops precipitously off the southern coast, and 100m gets you only about 1 mile. So the lower sea level you cite would shave less than 10 miles off the 200 mile journey.
You can verify the sea floor elevation with Google Earth.
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Re:Interesting Article But... (Score:5, Insightful)
McDonald's signs are how Man in four thousand years will discover that the whole world was once globally connected.
There will be debates as the signs are uncovered about whether they could have been formed naturally, but - in the end - it will demonstrate the global society we have today.
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And the Big Macs will still be edible. Or at least, as edible as they are in our own time.
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This assumes that civilization falls between now and then, and falls hard. I like to hope that it won't.
Maybe they walked to Crete (Score:2, Interesting)
Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years, specialists in Stone Age archaeology say.
There have been some pretty severe ice ages within the last million years when the sea levels were very low. For instance Japan used to be connected to Korea (and the Sea of Japan was a lake) only 18,000 years ago. Crete was probably really close to Greece back then too, maybe even connected.
Re:Maybe they walked to Crete (Score:5, Insightful)
What part of the quote are you and the GP failing to understand? Why do you both seem to be under the delusion that archeoligists have never heard of ice age migration when archeology was the discipline that discovered it?
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Getting to an island that is now ~500 km off shore is understandably hard for the GP to imagine being anything other than daunting if not nearly impossible for hominids living at that time. The GP and GGP are just looking for an explanation that makes it easier for such an ancient journey(s) to have taken place. TFA doesn't explicitly cover this but considering that the average depth of the Mediterranean Sea is ~1500 meters I would imagine that islands would be rather rare even during periods of glaciatio
Re:Maybe they walked to Crete (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do you get that number from? Other people are mentioning 200 miles which is also wrong. According to Wikipedia, Crete is only 100 miles (160km) from mainland Greece and looking at the map there are several small islands in between so each single journey by sea might only involve 30 miles or so. If the sea level was lower it is quite likely that there would be more islands sticking out, and if the surface was frozen in the winter, then there is your problem solved without any seafaring technology.
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I'll leave it someone less lazy than I to check if there was an ice age around the time they think the tools were made.
If we assume for the moment that there wasn't, and further assume that there are no islands in between Crete and Greece, I still could be convinced that ancient humans might have made such a voyage. After all, Pacific islanders have been known to make long sea journeys in outrigger canoes without navigational tools. Plus, as TFA states, the human migration to Australia started about 60K yea
Re:Maybe they walked to Crete (Score:4, Informative)
The original humans reached Australia when the sea levels were significantly lower, and while you're right that you couldn't just walk it, there may have only been a single crossing of ~90km between southeast asia and the Australia-ish landmass. Wiki [wikipedia.org]
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The Maori (sorry but I can't be buggered to copy and paste all the macrons
Just use doubled vowels. Thats how it should have been transliterated in the first place. Its not as if its a sound that doesn't occur in English, its just lengthened.
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and if the surface was frozen in the winter, then there is your problem solved without any seafaring technology.
Even during an ice age I doubt the Mediterranean ever came anywhere near freezing. But I agree with your other points.
Bah. (Score:3, Funny)
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So it's true. Whatever human ever did, he did it for the one big reason...
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But, how do the stone tools fit into the, um, picture? (No no, please don't imagine it.)
No imagination required [bbc.co.uk]
The article assumes too much. (Score:2, Insightful)
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I'm not so sure the find is suggestive of "maritime capabilities". To prove such a statement, you would have to prove evidence of navigation. Even if it were only celestial navigation, stronger evidence would be to find more than one such remote site with similar styles of survival technology. From the article: More than 2,000 stone artifacts, including the hand axes, were collected on the southwestern shore of Crete, near the town of Plakias. The question, at least for now, should be whether or not they went back.
Try looking up Kon Tiki, and Maori chants as navigation.
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Not so far from Greece (Score:4, Informative)
Its pretty easy to island hop from mainland Greece to Crete. You would be looking at 20km at a stretch. Thats very easy in a modern sea kayak. Even if proper hulls were beyond them they could build a sailing raft. There was more wood around in those days.
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Its pretty easy to island hop from mainland Greece to Crete. You would be looking at 20km at a stretch.
A fair point, which deserves an answer. The reason they're not thinking that is, probably, that there has as yet been no evidence that there were humans in mainland Greece anything like that early. The earliest known sign of human habitation in Europe is only ca. 40k years old [wikipedia.org].
Humans in Africa, however ...
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The reason they're not thinking that is, probably, that there has as yet been no evidence that there were humans in mainland Greece anything like that early. The earliest known sign of human habitation in Europe is only ca. 40k years old.
There's too much speculation. "No evidence of human habitation" doesn't mean there absolutely were no humans, only that we haven't found settlements. I for one would be much more comfortable with an undiscovered Greek sea-faring civilization engaging i
Re:Not so far from Greece (Score:5, Insightful)
Still not comfortable with our African ancestry I see.
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Still not comfortable with our African ancestry I see.
Nah, it's called using dramatic device to make a point :) I have no problems with our ancestry because if we go back far enough, we all come from the same puddle of slime.
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The logical answer. Of course, that leaves the question of why a group who could cross the 200 miles from northern Africa stopped at Crete, rather than island-hopping on across to Greece.
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A fair point, which deserves an answer. The reason they're not thinking that is, probably, that there has as yet been no evidence that there were humans in mainland Greece anything like that early. The earliest known sign of human habitation in Europe is only ca. 40k years old [wikipedia.org].
Humans in Africa, however ...
There is no evidence for Homo sapiens in Europe 130k years ago. However, according to the article, these tools are Acheulean [wikipedia.org] technology, which was used by Homo erectus. These were not modern humans, and th
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And to the best of my knowledge, a modern sea kayak would have been substantially beyond what it was believed humans were capable of over 100 thousand years ago. I can drive from one side of the country to the other in a car in just a few days. Even a few hundred years ago, that trip would have been considered almost impossible.
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Yeah but as I pointed out. Sailing rafts could have been built. The technology is pretty simple.
Sorry .... those were mine ... (Score:2)
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:5, Informative)
But just because you don't know anything about a subject doesn't mean you have to have opinions about it.
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:4, Insightful)
But just because you don't know anything about a subject doesn't mean you have to have opinions about it.
I know there's a joke in here somewhere that includes the words "Uh dude," and "Slashdot," but I can't quite make it out.
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You can thank sound bites and modern politics for that.
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew someone was going to say that.
Many primitive stone tools look like plain rocks at first glance, but there are distinctive chip and wear patterns on tools that just don't occur by chance. An expert will be able to tell you very quickly if you're dealing with an actual tool or just a rock that's assumed a suggestive shape.
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:5, Funny)
An expert will be able to tell you very quickly if you're dealing with an actual tool
Seriously. You're just asking for a smartass remark.
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That's the kind of thing that has to be examined in person, I think. A local university or museum will have someone who can take a look at it, and will probably be glad to do so.
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:5, Interesting)
To the untrained eye that is all they would appear, sure. I dont think the troll moderation was entirely fair - I would bet that a lot of readers looked at the photo at the top of that page and thought the same thing.
But, look for instance at the second piece from the right at the top of the story. Look at the top-left edge. See those repeated scallops that define the edge? That is not a naturally occuring stone, that is a hand-axe or "chopper" which has been intelligently worked and shaped for a purpose.
The article is pretty crappy though (as is expected with "science reporting" unfortunately.) The commentary regarding early human sea-crossing capabilities is a bit... well... warped. Even though there is a throwaway mention of non-modern humans it is given no context and the rest of the text appears quite ignorant of it. The fourth paragraph is one big facepalm. It implies several times that this find somehow indicates a 200-mile crossing from Africa, when it does nothing of the sort. Given the loose dating (prior to 130kya by geological strata) it would seem quite likely that the ancient population who made these tools crossed at or near a glacial maximum, when sea levels were much lower than today, making for much less open sea even if they did come directly from the African coast. And, at least from what I can see, there is no reason whatsoever to think they came from that direction anyway. More likely they came in over much shorter distances from the north, at a time when sea levels were low and the voyage would have been very short. If the dating comes in as early as some of the quotes indicate, this could even have been at the same time that the hippopotamus made the same journey.
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According to TFA(or at least one of the many I've read on this subject so far), the tools are of a style used by pre-humans 700,000 years or so ago. They're not saying that these tools are necessarily that old, or that they're made by pre-humans, just that the tools are of that style. It's a bit like finding a katana in a rubbish tip in New Jersey. You can't say that it was made by someone who was Japanese, but you can say that it might have been. The discovery is very new, and they'll find out more in due
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Acheulian industry, yes. It was used by H. erectus, H. ergaster, H. neanderthalis, as well as H. sapiens, from nearly 2 million years ago right up to modern times.
Au contraire, it matters a great deal. If they came from Greece it would be, as I said, no surprise, just confir
Re:They're just rocks. (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, if you can smuggle the mathematical concept of infinity in you can always get absurd results. :)
But in reality these are indeed as you say 'the real deal' - stones dont knapp themselves. If you ever get a chance to see how things things were made up close you will understand why. It's quite a fascinating - and painstaking - craft.
I'm still thinking the article is melodramatic fluff though. It's not at all surprising to see these things on Crete with such a date. We know archaic homonids made them, we know they spread out all along the coastlines 'beachcombing' just as our own ancestors did a little later. And island-hopping to Crete during a glacial maximum should have been well within their capabilities - other large mammals were doing it too, the hippos I already mentioned, elephants, even deer made that crossing at various points.
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Sure, if you can smuggle the mathematical concept of infinity in you can always get absurd results. :)
There's no need. I always carry a zero with me. (Eyes glaze over) "Stay away! I have a zero and I'm not afraid to use it!"
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Those look like rocks to me, not "stone tools".
To the uneducated, a lot of source code just looks like bug ridden inane rantings from incompetent software people who have no social skills and have yet to get out of their parents basement. Oh wait - bad example.
Re:Not Necasrily? (Score:5, Insightful)
FTA:
Stone tools found on an island indicates that humans were capable of rudimentary sea travel in order to get to Crete from the mainland. Also FTA:
That is an awful lot of stone tools to have just "washed up on to the beach" wouldn't you think so?
TFA states that the team was originally looking for much younger tools on the order of ~11,000 years old when they found these instead. Also FTA:
In other words, the dating of the soil associated with the tools indicates that they are at least 130,000 years old and are of a tool style used by humans/ancestors that is very ancient. The tools were not neccessarily made by early humans as at the time these tools were likely created, humans were not the only hominids. The upper limit for the date of these tools is ~700,000 years which would pre-date modern humans although it seems unlikely that they are that old.
Re:Not Necasrily? (Score:5, Funny)
They could have been carried by swallows.
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Doesn't wash, either way the flight speed is too low.
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FTA:
Stone tools found on an island indicates that humans were capable of rudimentary sea travel in order to get to Crete from the mainland.
Don't jump to conclusions. Maybe they just built a bridge.
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No, the bridge [wikipedia.org] was built by apes [wikipedia.org].
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The tools were not neccessarily made by early humans as at the time these tools were likely created, humans were not the only hominids.
You're saying it's possible that another, extinct branch of our tree had boats before our ancestors?
I just assumed that whoever got boats first had to be the ones that ended up covering the globe...
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Re:Not Necasrily? (Score:4, Interesting)
Crete is 200 miles from coast now. How high was middeterean see during the ice age and have there been islands in between? Maybe they did not travel 200 miles but much lower distance.
Re:Not Necasrily? (Score:5, Informative)
The Mediterranean Sea has an average depth of 1500 meters. It is possible that parts of the sea body were shallow enough to have exposed a few islands although it would seem that a great deal of it would still be very very deep and likely rather difficult to traverse without some sort of raft/boat technology.
Re:Not Necasrily? (Score:4, Interesting)
While the Med is, on average, 1500 meters deep, If you look at a map [wikipedia.org] that shows relative ocean depth around the island of Crete you will see that it is possible for a land bridge (or very close to one) on both the east and west sides of the island. Humans have always been known to follow shore lines during migration so this doesn't seem to be a far fetched theory.
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[inspects large version of map, counts topo rings]
Minimum depth on one end of the chain (between Crete and the next land) is 500m, and on the other end is 750m. So appears it was still an island.
Re:it's my beach party (Score:5, Insightful)
The article states Crete has been an island for five millions years. It also states that previously the earliest known sea crossings were 60Kya.
How did the tools get there without some species of hominoid crossing the water? 200 miles is a long way to swim, so how did the hominoids cross the water? What makes you think they brought the tools with them? How do you know that quartz is not the only suitable tool making rock found on Crete?
Nobody is suggesting they deliberately navigated to Crete but it's not a streach to think they were "going to sea" in some sort of raft/boat that was used for near shore spear fishing. Nor is it a streach to think a some of them were swept away to sea by currents/storms and ended up accidently colonising Crete.
Science is about the best available explaination that fits the evidence, do you have a better explaination of how hominoids got to Crete other than the one that says they arrived by some sort of prehistoric boat/raft?
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Nobody is suggesting they deliberately navigated to Crete
Maybe not but islands make their presence known by affecting the atmosphere (clouds form above them) and by providing a home to sea birds (where did that bird come from? There must be land that way). Also Crete has tall mountains (about 2100 metres high) so it could be seen from fifty kilometres away or so, assuming good atmospheric conditions.
Another thing is that while we don't know what species left these tools, there were many modern humans around. These people were as smart as us and may have known a l
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Agreed, finding evidence they had boats/rafts is giving them more credit than they were previously afforded. The problem with the diliberate navigation idea is there is currently no evidence to support it. Until such evidence is found the idea can only be considered speculation at best.
Ignorance of technologoy does not imply they were stupid. Modern humans are much less ignorant about technolo
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How did the tools get there without some species of hominoid crossing the water? 200 miles is a long way to swim, so how did the hominoids cross the water?
Perhaps they swam or rafted over from the North instead? Crete is only about 74 miles from mainland Greece, and there are island chains between them. During an Ice Age sea levels would be lower so there would probably be even more and larger islands between them.
Crete is nearly as close to Asia Minor (Turkey), also w/ island chains in between.
I really don't understand the author's decision to quote the distance to the African coast. The only reason I can think of is appalling geographic ignorance.
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If these hominids were "going to sea" you would think they could trade up for flint or obsidian
Actually, I'd expect the opposite. You don't embark on a potentially fatal sea crossing if you're one of the successful hunter gatherers back home. I'd imagine that the ones building the raft were the outcasts from the tribe, who were lucky to have any tools at all.
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Posting on /. and you have not realised its the nerds that are the outcasts?
You must be new here.
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That's only actually a fairly recent phenomena. Even the ancient Greeks who were more about the physical body and manliness than most respected their blacksmiths. They sure as hell didn't like them, they stank for one, but the guy who can make your shiny new weapon which is better than your old weapon is someone you have to pay attention to.
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but the guy who can make your shiny new weapon which is better than your old weapon is someone you have to pay attention to.
You also need to pay attention to the guy who got your old weapon. He may attack you while you're admiring yourself in the reflection of your shiny new weapon ;-)
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Re:they WALKED (not on water) (Score:4, Informative)
No, you are thinking of the black sea. The mediteranean is 5 million years old.
Re:they WALKED (not on water) (Score:5, Informative)
The Med has not been a dry basin for millions of years. You could have learned that if you'd RTFA or just did a little basic homework before spouting off a totally false statement like that.
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You need to read less science fiction.
Re:I read a lot (Score:4, Funny)
In fact, I don't know if you know this or not, Greeks were spawned by niggers
Really? That's absolutely fascinating. I had previously assumed that, unlike all of the other humans on the Earth whose ancestors came from Africa, the Greek civilisation had sprung full-formed from the head of Zeus. Thank you for correcting my belief.
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The parent was meant as a troll, but there's actually some truth to his post. The dark curly hair found in parts of southern Europe is not native to the (relatively modern) continent, but rather was the result of African slaves (and some freemen) interbreeding with Greeks and Romans.
However, I find Zeus' explanation far more amusing :)
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Since those folks didn't leave readme files or cookbooks around, everything was taught by learning how the person a little older than you did things. For that reason there's a remarkable amount of consistency in materials and manufacturer, given how difficult making stone tools with ston