Boats Taken For Granted!
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Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
What is the earliest evidence of sail technology anyone has seen or heard of?
Regards,
Barry
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
Barry
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
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Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Actual physical evidence? Probably relatively recent finds in Egypt of rigging and such in an apparent store room.
Otherwise, Robert G. Bednarik is a leading proponent of Homo Erectus sailing.
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199907/0064.html
Otherwise, Robert G. Bednarik is a leading proponent of Homo Erectus sailing.
http://www.asa3.org/archive/asa/199907/0064.html
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
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-- George Carlin
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Thank you for that info. Depictions in art would be evidence. Still wondering about the earliest. Once you have sail power, you're good to go."There are no known depictions of water craft in Pleisotcene art, and no
physical remains suggestive of navigation older than 10 500 year have ever
been found.
Regards,
Barry
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
Barry
STOP PLATE TECTONICS!
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
That depends on how you look at it, wxs.wxsby wrote:What is the earliest evidence of sail technology anyone has seen or heard of?
You could consider Meganthropus paleojavanicus to be that earliest evidence. By inference: MP lived on the island of Java by 1,57 mya. So he either walked there or he sailed there. Before 1,57 mya!
Walking is considered by most, today, to have been impossible as most punters posit there were deep, and wide, straits/channels between Java and Sumatra and Malacca, just like today, which would have prohibited crossing on foot. I disagree with that position as I think early HE could (and did) walk across the continental SE Asian plain because sea levels were up to 400 feet lower than today. It was dry land!
But if the majority, that doesn't (yet...) agree with me, is right then HE could only have sailed to Java! Before 1,57 mya!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganthropus
Last edited by Rokcet Scientist on Thu Feb 25, 2010 4:32 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Yeah....unless someone ever made a boat or sail out of stone it seems unlikely that we'll ever find a remnant of a HE boat in Indonesia.
I can see an immediate technical problem with a stone boat.
I can see an immediate technical problem with a stone boat.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Archimedes didn't. And neither do I: the majority of the thousands of houseboats in Amsterdam's canals, e.g., are made of concrete, a.k.a. cement (underwater)! And they can stay afloat for well over a century...Minimalist wrote:I can see an immediate technical problem with a stone boat.
Just imagine a concrete 'shoebox' without the lid. Lower it into the water and it will float (thanks to Archimedes). Then build a lightweight (usually wooden) house on top, and Bingo! you have a houseboat (with a huge, though low cellar; ideal for storage).
It's really that simple.
So although it's not very likely that HE built entire stone boats, the concept is certainly technically feasible. I.o.w.: don't rule out stone boats too fast!
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Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Stones as ballast Yes-boats made principally of stone No.
Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat
Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Actually, I have a friend with a cement sailboat who has sailed it all over the world. I didn't volunteer to go with him.Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat
But I don't see early man, no matter how great his knapping skills, making a boat out of a boulder... or maybe we have just been thinking small and not looking for the right thing...
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Barry
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Barry
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Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Archimedes didn't.
Ever hear the phrase...."sink like a stone."
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Note-a barge is a damn sight more 'seaworthy' than reed or balsa rafts which didn't preclude the latter two to be used for crossing oceans.Sam Salmon wrote: Note-A barge is not an ocean going boat
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Often enough. And you've seen that it doesn't apply to cement boats/barges, so why would it to stone boats/barges? Archimedes' principle of the Golden Crown, weight-to-volume ratio, precludes it.Minimalist wrote:Ever hear the phrase...."sink like a stone."Archimedes didn't.
Only, you'd need a couple of pneumatic jackhammers to 'chip'/chisel a stone boat/barge. And they weren't easy to come by, 1,6 mya. So the odds that stone boats/barges were actually built then are slim.
And, if any were ever built the odds that they would survive a million years wouldn't be bad at all. So we would probably find them. We haven't (yet), however. Probably because there aren't any.
Any boats or rafts then built of organic materials would have been hard pushed to survive in a recognisable state beyond 5 years in that super humid equatorial monsoon climate. Let alone a million years.
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
I like how threads stay on topic (NOT!). Archaeolithic sailors..hee...hee... At least the ways to bomb threads are sometimes entertaining.Rokcet Scientist wrote:..... pneumatic jackhammers to 'chip'/chisel a stone boat/barge. And they weren't easy to come by, 1,6 mya. ....
The first sailors story needs some context from experience perhaps, rather than speculative assertions. I have lived in that environment and with hunter/gatherer-adapted Natives in the Amazon Basin, and leather goods could not survive the moisture level unless placed in the sun to dry. We preferred using canoes hollowed from large trees in rivers with currents, and rafts are very easy to make to move goods like game, fish caught, or shelter materials downstream. Canoes last a long time because they function after becoming water-logged. In the Pacific Northwest the trees were large enough for ocean-going canoes. Two canoes tied together and you can go from rivers onto seas.Rokcet Scientist wrote:..... Any boats or rafts then built of organic materials would have been hard pushed to survive in a recognisable state beyond 5 years in that super humid equatorial monsoon climate. ...
Regarding walking vs. floatation, there is a deep ocean trench separating the Sundaland plate and Wallacea. It seems unequivocal that these two land areas have never been connected, hence any hominids settling in Wallacea crossed water somehow in reproductively-viable numbers.
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Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
We beaten this one to death, archaeo. In a maritime environment it is simply unreasonable to expect that one would find the remains of organic materials used for boat or raft building after 750,000 years.
As you say, the depth of the ocean trenches precludes walking so a degree of deduction is needed to see how HE colonized those islands. A boat seems the logical answer.
As you say, the depth of the ocean trenches precludes walking so a degree of deduction is needed to see how HE colonized those islands. A boat seems the logical answer.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
-- George Carlin
-- George Carlin
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
If you support that theory you ignore 2 million years of tectonic/volcanic activity in the most tectonically/volcanically active region on the planet! And if you do, the consequence can only be that HE knew how to sail before 1,57 mya! A bit longer ago than 10,5 kya, isn't it?archaeo wrote:Regarding walking vs. floatation, there is a deep ocean trench separating the Sundaland plate and Wallacea. It seems unequivocal that these two land areas have never been connected, hence any hominids settling in Wallacea crossed water somehow in reproductively-viable numbers.
Re: Boats Taken For Granted!
Well -
Do not lose all hope ye who enter here.
There is the natural process of mineralization.
Looking around my study, on the windowsill is a magnificent piece of petrified wood, then
A beautifully preserved fish, right down to each bone and fin from the Green River shales in Utah,
And a Miocene antelope horn who's tips are still clearly and neatly chewed by a Miocene mouse (Eumys? Don't remember).
Anyway, the newer stuff has generally been preserved in an anaerobic environment of some sort,
Your typical bog/mud situation.
Plenty of older stuff has been mineralized, including, if I remember correctly, a piece of 120k old whale skin
From one of the S. African coastal sites.
It is not a matter of if, but when some persistent person finds the right shale deposit on an ancient coastline.........
Then, jump back!, because Das Klub will immediately bring out their heavy guns
To prove that it is just another geomorph which happens to look like ribs and planking, or whatever.
Me, I'm betting on some bright thing from the neoDarwinians to come out with an authoritative paper
On just why Homo s. lost his early and obvious ability to walk on water
Through a mutation which messed up his specific gravity.
cheers,
john
Do not lose all hope ye who enter here.
There is the natural process of mineralization.
Looking around my study, on the windowsill is a magnificent piece of petrified wood, then
A beautifully preserved fish, right down to each bone and fin from the Green River shales in Utah,
And a Miocene antelope horn who's tips are still clearly and neatly chewed by a Miocene mouse (Eumys? Don't remember).
Anyway, the newer stuff has generally been preserved in an anaerobic environment of some sort,
Your typical bog/mud situation.
Plenty of older stuff has been mineralized, including, if I remember correctly, a piece of 120k old whale skin
From one of the S. African coastal sites.
It is not a matter of if, but when some persistent person finds the right shale deposit on an ancient coastline.........
Then, jump back!, because Das Klub will immediately bring out their heavy guns
To prove that it is just another geomorph which happens to look like ribs and planking, or whatever.
Me, I'm betting on some bright thing from the neoDarwinians to come out with an authoritative paper
On just why Homo s. lost his early and obvious ability to walk on water
Through a mutation which messed up his specific gravity.
cheers,
john
"Man is a marvellous curiosity. When he is at his very, very best he is sort of a low-grade nickel-plated angel; at his worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm."
Mark Twain
Mark Twain