Boats

[Beagle]

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jun/20 ... :int=0&-C=

But that picture, Erlandson and others say, is badly flawed, due to something researchers once rarely considered: the changes in sea level over time. Some 20,000 years ago, for example, ice sheets locked up much of the world’s water, lowering the oceans and laying bare vast coastal plains—attractive hunting grounds and harbors for maritime people. Today these plains lie beneath almost 400 feet of water, out of reach of all but a handful of underwater archaeologists. “So this shines a spotlight on a huge area of ignorance: what people were doing when sea level was lower than at present,” says Geoff Bailey, a coastal archaeologist at the University of York in England. “And that is especially problematic, given that sea level was low for most of prehistory.”

Concerned that evidence of human settlement and migration may be lost under the sea, researchers are finding new ways of tracking ancient mariners. By combining archaeological studies on remote islands with computer simulations of founding populations and detailed examinations of seafloor topography and ancient sea level, they are amassing crucial new data on voyages from northeast Asia to the Americas 15,000 years ago, from Japan to the remote island of Okinawa 30,000 years ago, and from Southeast Asia to Australia 50,000 years ago. New evidence even raises the possibility that our modern human ancestors may have journeyed by raft or simple boat out of Africa 60,000 to 70,000 years ago, crossing the mouth of the Red Sea. “If they could travel from Southeast Asia to Australia 50,000 years ago, the question now is, how much farther back in time could they have been doing it?” Bailey asks. “Why not the Red Sea?”

New article in Discover magazine about a soon to be published study regarding Pleistocene seafaring.

[Minimalist]

Even where land lay beyond view, ancient mariners could have deduced its presence from natural indicators such as cloud formations that tend to gather over islands, mats of drifting land vegetation, and the flight paths of land-roosting seabirds.

He's right of course. Still, that sort of knowledge takes time to amass which implies a culture capable of making such observations and passing them down. Beats the hell out of the dull caveman model, doesn't it?

[Cognito]

Beats the hell out of the dull caveman model, doesn't it?

Actually it's the hairy, nearly naked caveman model. It's really time that we gave ancient people credit for being intelligent and ingenious. Those who carry forth the old model from Victorian times haven't been a benefit to research. Pleistocene people were sailing all over the map.

[Ishtar]

Beats the hell out of the dull caveman model, doesn't it?

Actually it's the hairy, nearly naked caveman model.

Phew!

[Digit]

Down girl!