More seafaring hominids

[Minimalist]

Sleeping. Cooking. Foraging. These were not merchant ships during the Roman Empire which sailed along the coasts from port to port but had some ultimate destination in mind. These people were migrating and looking for a new homeland to settle or at least exploit for a while until the resources ran low. Then they moved on.

[Cognito]

These people were migrating and looking for a new homeland to settle or at least exploit for a while until the resources ran low. Then they moved on.

Absolutely, Min. You are correct that travelling by water was safer, no land predators to deal with such as dyer wolves, sabers, cave lions, cave bears, or other hostile hominids. Exploring and migrating, that's the ticket!

[circumspice]

Nothing new here, but because they are heartened by the positive response to the Indonesian butchered rhino press release, they are doing a redux on the 130,000 year old stone tools found in Crete. Can't let a good press opportunity go to waste, ya know...


http://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/05 ... years-ago/

[Minimalist]

No one walked to Crete.

[kbs2244]

Or Cyprus

Note they seem to be farmers

"The new location has been named Ayios Ioannis/Brescia-Ano Rhoudias and based on the finds it seems to have been an agricultural settlement."

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/05 ... mountains/

[Minimalist]

[circumspice]

No one walked to Crete.

Agreed.

Do we need to wait for natural attrition to clear out the hold-outs of the accidental migration theory? I know that if I was confronted with the ever increasing evidence of very ancient sea faring, I'd just have to concede. There's no dishonor in being wrong. Their theories were more or less viable before the sea faring evidence started piling up.

Since most of the artifacts are stone & usually found in tropical or subtropical sites, there's little to no hope of finding a raft or a boat preserved in the archaeological record. My fondest hope/dream/fantasy is that someday, somewhere, somebody will find a mind-bogglingly old raft preserved in a peat bog... (like the spears in Germany)

[circumspice]

Or Cyprus

Note they seem to be farmers

"The new location has been named Ayios Ioannis/Brescia-Ano Rhoudias and based on the finds it seems to have been an agricultural settlement."

http://greece.greekreporter.com/2018/05 ... mountains/

Did you actually read the article?

The finds mentioned in this article are nowhere near the age of the stone tools found in Indonesia & Crete. They date from near the end of the Neolithic.

Until evidence of very ancient farming is found, it is probably safe to say that the people who left those stone tools in Indonesia & Crete were hunter gatherers.

The finds are very important in understanding the island’s early prehistory (10,000 – 6,000 BC), the antiquities department said.

[kbs2244]

My point was that there was very early farming going on.
Farming is a learned skill.
It is not something a H/G decides to do one fine spring morning.
Whoever the boaters were, they brought farmers with them.
That seems to mean an intent to form settlements.

(Unless we want to take up the Viking farmer/raider model. But that assumes even better sailing expertise.)

[circumspice]

My point was that there was very early farming going on.
Farming is a learned skill.
It is not something a H/G decides to do one fine spring morning.
Whoever the boaters were, they brought farmers with them.
That seems to mean an intent to form settlements.

(Unless we want to take up the Viking farmer/raider model. But that assumes even better sailing expertise.)

The boaters in question in this thread are from a far more distant past than the boaters mentioned in the article that you linked. 700,000 ybp in Indonesia & 130,000 ybp in Crete. There is no correlation whatsoever. The time frame mentioned in the article you linked was 10,000-6,000 ybp in Cyprus. How can that possibly have any relevance to the current discussion? The minimum difference in the time frames is 120,000 years. Unless new evidence is found, the Cyprus boaters were HSS because all other hominids were almost certainly extinct before 10,000-6,000 ybp. The boaters in Indonesia could not have been HSS. The boaters in Crete were 'probably' not HSS.

I think you're confused. 10,000 ybp is not an extremely early date for farming. There is some disputed evidence of farming in Egypt that dates to approximately 15,000 ybp. Some say that adverse weather conditions caused hunter gatherers to begin subsistence farming out of need & when the weather conditions improved sometime later, they resumed a hunter gatherer lifestyle. They were anatomically modern humans.


From Wikipedia:

The Qadan culture (13,000-9,000 BC) was a Mesolithic industry that, archaeological evidence suggests, originated in Upper Egypt (present day south Egypt) approximately 15,000 years ago [11][12] The Qadan subsistence mode is estimated to have persisted for approximately 4,000 years. It was characterized by hunting, as well as a unique approach to food gathering that incorporated the preparation and consumption of wild grasses and grains.[11][12] Systematic efforts were made by the Qadan people to water, care for, and harvest local plant life, but grains were not planted in ordered rows.[13]

Around twenty archaeological sites in upper Nubia give evidence for the existence of the Qadan culture's grain-grinding culture. Its makers also practiced wild grain harvesting along the Nile during the beginning of the Sahaba Daru Nile phase, when desiccation in the Sahara caused residents of the Libyan oases to retreat into the Nile valley.[14] Among the Qadan culture sites is the Jebel Sahaba cemetery, which has been dated to the Mesolithic.[15]

Qadan peoples developed sickles and grinding stones to aid in the collecting and processing of these plant foods prior to consumption.[2] However, there are no indications of the use of these tools after around 10,000 BC, when hunter-gatherers replaced them.[2]

But whatever... in Indonesia & Crete, Homo erectus, Homo neandertalensis, Homo heidelbergensis or whoever the boaters were, they didn't bring farming with them.

[kbs2244]

You are correct

I had my time line twisted.

[Cognito]

But whatever... in Indonesia & Crete, Homo erectus, Homo neandertalensis, Homo heidelbergensis or whoever the boaters were, they didn't bring farming with them.

Spice, with the discovery of H sapiens look-alikes in Morocco dated to circa 300kya (see: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... y-science/), it is entirely possible that your list might need to include moderns, especially in Crete.

More heresy, of course; however, I've been known to color outside the lines before.

[circumspice]

But whatever... in Indonesia & Crete, Homo erectus, Homo neandertalensis, Homo heidelbergensis or whoever the boaters were, they didn't bring farming with them.

Spice, with the discovery of H sapiens look-alikes in Morocco dated to circa 300kya (see: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... y-science/), it is entirely possible that your list might need to include moderns, especially in Crete.

More heresy, of course; however, I've been known to color outside the lines before.

Very true. I remember the big to do about the dating associated with those early modern humans. I'm particularly glad that they were careful with the documentation of their on-site work with remains so that the dating could be considered secure.

However, I did say 'probably' not HSS in regard to Crete because of relatively recent finds of early modern humans in Morocco & Israel.

As to the subject of farming... It wasn't a part of the original posted subject. Kbs's link clearly stated that the dating in Cyprus was 10,000-6,000 ybp. There' s no question that the mariners mentioned in that article were HSS. And, it was primarily an article about agricultural communities from that era in Cyprus. Not about boating to an isolated island in an extremely ancient time period...

But so far the oldest dates for anything that even remotely resembles farming remains approximately 15,000 ybp in Upper Egypt. Until some new discovery pushes that date back it is, more or less, the benchmark for dating ancient agricultural practices.

But thanks for the reminder cogs. Keep coloring outside the lines. It's never good to be in lockstep with paradigms because paradigms can change with the turn of a trowel. Heretics often stir the pot enough to make researchers go back & review existing sites or look for new sites. It's all good.

[circumspice]

My point was that there was very early farming going on.
Farming is a learned skill.
It is not something a H/G decides to do one fine spring morning.
Whoever the boaters were, they brought farmers with them.
That seems to mean an intent to form settlements.

(Unless we want to take up the Viking farmer/raider model. But that assumes even better sailing expertise.)

Actually... Farming probably WAS something that hunter gatherers decided to do one fine spring morning... All people at the time just prior to the invention of farming were hunter/gatherers/scavengers. It had to begin sometime, somewhere when a person thought that maybe they could grow some plants from seeds. They were very closely attuned to their environment & had probably observed that some seeds spilled on wet ground had germinated. From that observation it's not unlikely that they made a leap of intuition & decided to try planting some seeds of a desirable plant where it was convenient for them to watch over & then harvest when ripe. Initially, they probably had more failures than successes. But some of them persevered until the idea was proven to be a general success. The concept of farming then spread fairly rapidly. There's nothing quite like having enough food to carry you through hard times to prove the value of farming. Food security had to be a high priority in those times.

[Minimalist]

It's also probably not the kind of thing that everyone in a community decided to do at the same time. Plus there is the intermediate step of herding. It's not too much of a step from moving around from pasture to pasture as the seasons change to developing a sense of attachment for the land. Eventually the shepherds would move the animals and other people settled down to a cozy spot near a water source and built huts. Tending to certain useful plants in the area seems a logical progession.