Have you ever considered just how widespread our species is over the earth? And how long it has been widespread?
When Europeans like Vasco Da Gama, Magellan, and James Cook plowed the waters of the world on their voyages of exploration, they weren’t surprised to find people practically everywhere. They were surprised when they didn’t find people. By the 15th century CE most of the world had already been settled by human beings for thousands of years, most places for tens of thousands of years or more.
So, for example, Australia was settled more than 40,000 years ago and, in all likelihood it was settled by raft or boat in short sea crossings from southeast Asia. The idea of very ancient sea voyages shouldn’t surprise us.
Early humans, possibly even prehuman ancestors, appear to have been going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected.
That is the startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say, are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.
What they found were stone axes, Old Stone Age axes of a style that hasn’t been used for more than 100,000 years and might be as much as 700,000 years old. And, since Crete has been an island for millions of years, it must have been reached by sea.
I’ll be interested in learning what the chemical composition of these axes is. It should possible to place where the stone of which they are made is from.
I am quite skeptical of that interpretation of this find and I’d like to offer another one: ballast. The stone axes had been used as ballast for some ship, one somewhat more recent than 100,000 years and discarded on the shores of Crete. I’d believe that before I believed in a 700,000 year old voyage across the open sea.
That’s certainly possible. Archaeology is be-deviled by stuff like that, where people didn’t leave ruins and old stuff sitting there, but used it in other areas and purposes (I’m thinking of the fate of most of the Wonders of the Ancient World, among other things).
“seafaring” seems a stong word here. Currently, the sea is densely populated with islands and one is never out of sight of land. At times the sea levels were much lower, some of the islands connected to the mainland. I’d speculate more on humans swimming with heavy tools to Crete or using very primtive rafts.
PD, I was reacting to this from the cited article:
Dave, I agree with your skepticsm and find your point about ballast a good one.
But IF, as the article suggests, we are looking at events over the last 100,000 to 700,000 years, we need to consider that the geography has changed, these islands were not so remote at times, being connected by land bridges or by stepping stone islands. Here is a study on this issue:
http://proteus.brown.edu/islandarchaeology/admin/download.html?attachid=3416684
(The authors simlarly suggest that a find on one of the Cycladic islands, hailed as evidence of significant seafaring capabilities in the Mesolithic era can be explained by the probability that the route was at one time overland)
I suppose this is an alternative to your theory, but it was really intended as a more probable scenario to significant seafaring activities 130,000 years ago (particularly from Africa). Man walked along the coastlines and occassionaly would have used some wood to help cross narrows.
correction: the route was “largely” overland