Boats?

[Digit]

Those I was intending to throw at you!
My reasoning explains it, the time scale is remarkably short for the distance involved.
Same along the western seaboard of South America.

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

But to return to my point about groups leap frogging each other.
Ethnologists claim that HG groups would have spread in Africa at about 15miles/generation.
Now when you consider how fast homo moved towards Oz the maths don't add up if each time ony the leading group advanced and the others settled.
Roy.

What I see in eastern North America is hunters who would drive big game into marshes.

The bison, mammoth and mastodon would travel several hundred miles from winter salt licks south of the Ohio River to summer pasturages on the fringe of the ice shelf, and later just to the south of the lakes. The big game paths were as wide as country roads, and perfectly cleared and compacted.

That's travel of several hundred miles per year for the hunters who followed that game. It explains why clovis traveled so fast from its introduction points on the southern North American coast.

While both the coastal walk and boat models are appealing, it would seem to me that once ambush hunting techniques were discovered, it would have lead to rapid HE expansion and migration.

My current thinking is that HSS evolved in coastal Asia, and spread from there.
But I have been wrong before, and reserve the right to be wrong both now and in the future.

[Digit]

Granted EP, but the SE Asia scenario is somewhat different.
It seems that by and large the HE never untertook such actions, they seem, according to the Chinese, to have stuck to the coast all the way from the Persian Gulf down to Flores.
And they moved PDQ!

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

I saw a copy of "Current Archaeology" at the newstand several months back and it reported Human remains from 30,000 BCE had been found on Okinawa.

Lest I go off topic, did I ever mention to you the 1.8 million year old HE in Malaysia who were killed by impact?:
http://lunarmeteoritehunters.blogspot.c ... orted.html

Or did you simply miss this, or forget about it?

I don't think you folks here understand yet the explosive forces and the total fatalities over a large area generated by impacts. The repetition here of Keller's nonsense that the KT impact did not kill the dinosaur is clear evidence of that.

[Digit]

Yeah! I saw it as well.
The speed at which people spread down thewest coast of S America and along the Asiatic coast is astonishing and the fact that they seem not to have penetrated far inland at first infers to me that they had a maritine culture.
It seems also that in some instances they preferred the risks of island hopping to moving inland till they ran out of coast line.
Had HE moved across Asia on a broad front they would still be travelling!

Roy.

[E.P. Grondine]

Yeah! I saw it as well.
The speed at which people spread down the west coast of S America and along the Asiatic coast is astonishing and the fact that they seem not to have penetrated far inland at first infers to me that they had a maritine culture.

While the "Great Turtle" plays a central role in Algonquin traditions for some reason (one mentioned in "Man and Impact in the Americas", a great book, or so I've been told by some people), we do have to face up to the fact that theory is always limited by recoveries. We all have to remember that China was in nearly constant turmoil during the period of the development of modern anthropology.)

It seems also that in some instances they preferred the risks of island hopping to moving inland till they ran out of coast line.
Had HE moved across Asia on a broad front they would still be travelling!
Roy.

Not if they were following migrating big game, such as elephantidae (sp?). Then the spread is about 300-500 miles per year. As the spread of clovis appears to demonstrate, it is damn fast.

By the way, I saw a session at SEAC in Knoxville in 2007, and if I remember right (and since my stroke I sometimes do not) the very early crossings of the Mississippi River were in the north, say around lower Wisconsin - that was as wide a passage as they could navigate or cross on ice. Determined by quarry usage.

[Digit]

is about 300-500 miles per year

That hardly leaves time to eat!

Roy.

[Minimalist]

At least Keller does not rely on foklore, EP.

http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/03/q3/0925-keller.htm

Keller and a growing number of colleagues around the world are turning up evidence that, rather than a single event, an intensive period of volcanic eruptions as well as a series of asteroid impacts are likely to have stressed the world ecosystem to the breaking point. Although an asteroid or comet probably struck Earth at the time of the dinosaur extinction, it most likely was, as Keller says, "the straw that broke the camel's back" and not the sole cause.

Perhaps more controversially, Keller and colleagues contend that the "straw" -- that final impact -- is probably not what most scientists believe it is. For more than a decade, the prevailing theory has centered on a massive impact crater in Mexico. In 1990, scientists proposed that the Chicxulub crater, as it became known, was the remnant of the fateful dinosaur-killing event and that theory has since become dogma.

Keller has accumulated evidence, including results released this year, suggesting that the Chicxulub crater probably did not coincide with the K/T boundary. Instead, the impact that caused the Chicxulub crater was likely smaller than originally believed and probably occurred 300,000 years before the mass extinction. The final dinosaur-killer probably struck Earth somewhere else and remains undiscovered, said Keller.

That evidence has to be dealt with.

[Rokcet Scientist]

Depends on a lot of things...not the least of which is how fast did they have to get across that damn river!

Unless they were chased by other HE, or unless they had exhausted the food supply on their side, there was no hurry at all. They could afford to ponder the problem for generations until the dime dropped. Nobody was waiting for them on the other side. They didn't have a train or plane to catch.

For that matter, groups tagging along behind would be moving into an area which had been picked over.

Unless 'groups tagging along behind' did so years later, well after the 'picked over' area had been vacated by the first group. The area would have regenerated to the extent that the new group wouldn't even know it had been occupied by other HE before them.

[Digit]

So where did the first group go if the land in front of them had been picked over as well?
And surely a maritime life style would have difficulty exhausting a food supply that was being constantly refreshed from the sea?

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So where did the first group go if the land in front of them had been picked over as well?

They wouldn't know it had been 'picked over' because it had been vacated for years and regenerated.

And surely a maritime life style would have difficulty exhausting a food supply that was being constantly refreshed from the sea?

Absolutely. And living along the coastline gathering seafood is also a 'maritime life style'.

[Digit]

They wouldn't know it had been 'picked over' because it had been vacated for years and regenerated.

You've completely misunderstood me.
We have a thousand miles of coast line occupied. A group in the middle will be aware of people to either side, they must keep their numbers to a level that their territory can sustain or they are in trouble.
But their numbers do rise so that the pickings become leaner and crustaceans for example are becoming depleted.
What can they do?

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

they must keep their numbers to a level that their territory can sustain or they are in trouble.

I doubt overpopulation was a problem. Quite the contrary. Average age was something around 25/35. If they were lucky. 4 out of 5 kids died before they were 2 years old. Underpopulation was a problem. Not overpopulation.

What can they do?

Make war and steal land/food from the neighbours, or marry them...

[Digit]

or marry them...

Which wouldn't relieve pressure on their resourses. So now you accept that warfare is one of the options.
Having said that, the speed at which they spread suggests that they did avoid conflict. Which ever side 'won', the need to move would be reduced, and the need to migrate removed, at least for a time.

Roy.

[Rokcet Scientist]

or marry them...

So now you accept that warfare is one of the options.

There you go again: I never said it wasn't!
You have a rich imagination.

When primates are involved war is always an option.