Northwest Passage?

[Rokcet Scientist]

were reached by HE, on foot, before, say 500 kya.

Also not proven.

Which is why it's a hypothesis until it is.
But that would require Bob Ballard's intervention.

[Digit]

True, but again you would need to explain how a non-boating/rafting etc group got OOA in the first place. And please don't tell me about sea levels as the Red sea is well over your 400 ft deep mark with no evidence to suggest it was ever that shallow.
Moses not counted of course.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

True, but again you would need to explain how a non-boating/rafting etc group got OOA in the first place. And please don't tell me about sea levels as the Red sea is well over your 400 ft deep mark with no evidence to suggest it was ever that shallow.

But the Reed Sea, north of the Red Sea, was, Roy! Easily.

[Digit]

I expected that, BUT, according to the archeological evidence there were two crossings. One in the north of the continent, over the Nile, and the other across the lower reaches of the Red Sea.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

I expected that, BUT, according to the archeological evidence there were two crossings. One in the north of the continent, over the Nile, and the other across the lower reaches of the Red Sea.

There were probably many, many more OOA crossings than just those two, Roy.
The earliest ones, it now seems, on foot, across the Reed Sea, around 2 mya (Dmanisi). And if we agree that rafting/boating/sailing was developed around 1 mya, later OOA episodes, more recent than 1 mya, by rafting/boating/sailing across the southern end of the Red Sea.

But in any case HS(S) is well and truly overtaken and marginalized as "THE" OOA species. HS(S) was a laggard. He wasn't the first, but instead the last hominid that came OOA. Almost 2 million years after HE!

[Digit]

Yep a late comer.
There was TV programme here last night about how cooking food may have led to us becoming 'human'.
The argumant ran that cooking results in less time and energy being required by our bodies to break down meat and the large increase in sugars powered a large brain and thus intelligence.
All good solid experimentally proven chemistry.
Pity about the assumption about the brain though.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

The argumant ran that cooking results in less time and energy being required by our bodies to break down meat and the large increase in sugars powered a large brain and thus intelligence.

So apparently we don't we eat large quantities of sugars...

[Digit]

Apparently we are pre programmed to seek out sweet fatty foods.

Roy.

[Ishtar]

Plus when ever Homo crossed that line other species could have also crossed at that time. Why did they not?

I don't know, but I'm guessing it may have something to do with fauna not knowing about rafting/boating/sailing, while homo did...

[Digit]

I woder if they sang the Eton Boating Song back then?

Roy.

[Minimalist]

How about giving us a few bars of that?

[Digit]

I've had this year's bath Min, sorry!

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

So for now I peg the beginning of hominid (HE) boating/sailing at around 1 mya.

Well, we have Malaysian handaxes dated to 1.8 million years old. So if you subscribe to the view that every single type of hominid came out of Africa at some point, which we know the Club does, you could be looking at pegging the beginning of hominid sailing to 2 million years ago.



View topic ~ 1.8 million year old handaxes found in Malaysia

Pretty much says it all, and loudly, except for the details. (Note Bene - This particular population was devastated by a massive impact nearby.)

The question that is avoided by nearly everyone is Desmond's "Homo aquaticus", long relegated by some to psuedo-archaeology and the fringe, particularly by those of the everyone out of Africa school.

As the taphonomy is a mess, with experts in strident opposition, let's talk about it this way. A common HS/HN ancestor [whether you call him Habilis, Ergaster, Erectus, or Heidelbergensis] made it to Europe, and that may be where Homo Aquaticus started. Or perhaps he was in coastal Africa, spread to India, and then on to SE Asia. There the evolution to HSS completes, and HSS spreads, including back into Africa.

In my opinion, until the physical anthropologists start understanding the effects of large hyper-velocity impacts on evolving hominid populations, confusion is going to reign. Once they do start to understand them, the fossil record will become clearer, the mt DNA distributions will become clear, as well as the rates of divergence.

All of this is another reason why "Man and Impact in the Americas" is a landmark book, which will probably end up in the same class as Gibson's "Decline and Fall", but short of Darwin's "Origins". A great collectable, and a great gift.

[Minimalist]

All of this is another reason why "Man and Impact in the Americas" is a landmark book, which will probably end up in the same class as Gibson's "Decline and Fall", but short of Darwin's "Origins". A great collectable, and a great gift.

And now, back to our show!

[Ishtar]

EP,

I have now found the source of that story on the 1.83 million year old hand axes and it's here: USM discovers concrete evidence that will change the history of man

It gives much more information. It says that the handaxes were found embedded in suevite rock, which was formed as a result of the impact of meteorites circa 1.74 – 1.83 million years ago.

We're emailing Robert Bednarik to see if there's been any further movement on this since January 2009, when the story first broke. The Fission Track Dating Method was used to date the handaxes.