Archaeologica.org

Indeed it is, Dig.

You know, it struck me while reading that there is yet another answer to the river crossing issue which does not require the building of an armada at every crossing.

Build one boat and use it as a ferry.

Absolutely Min. Our local coracles can carry two at a push which is all you need.

http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/rural_w ... uilder.htm

Keep the hide and dump the frame after crossing, a few hours work and you are ready to cross.
Mean time others would logically be using the time on other tasks if only fishing and gathering shell fish and what ever else they needed.
It would become routine after a time I would imagine.
The original throw away society!

Roy.

Digit wrote: Do you wish to offer any evidence in support of that contention?

If you show me their boats.

If you show me their boats.

The ones that you have already agreed they must have had do you mean?

I'm not saying neither HE nor HS had boats. They did, of course. Logic dictates it

Stop moving the goal posts! Please!
We don't have the clothing that logic dictates HSN must have had to survive in northern Europe, but logic dictates that they did.
Though I suppose we could list freezing to death as yet another suggestion for their extinction of course.

Roy.

Minimalist wrote: Whoever said they made ONE BIG BOAT? Once you know how to make a boat making the second, third and fourth boats seems to be a simple matter.

Right! And then the Armada sailed to the promised land. Can you visualize it? Straight out of a Cecil B. DeMille movie... Let's add a shark pack attack and a typhoon for dramatic effect. And either what's-his-face-Gibson or this Crocodile Dundee bloke in the Moses part. Could be a runaway box office success. Like planet of the Apes.

But just suppose they did, then why would they do it? Why would a small band of beach combing hunter gatherers decide to strike out straight across the sea in a flotilla of fucking coracles to paddle 500 kilometers (300 miles) directly south? To what? They didn't know there was a continent there. Couldn't see it. So it couldn't be a goal. Going to the next island was logical and doable. In a very limited set of circumstances, involving the wind, the currents, the moon, and a whole pantheon of gods. But striking out across the open ocean in coracles in search of... what? doesn't make sense. Coracles wouldn't last 20 miles on the open ocean. Especially not if burdened with women and children.

So what about an accident? Suppose this flottilla was en-route to the next island and a storm broke loose and they were thrown off course. So much off course that the remaining one or two coracles accidentally landed in Oz (they would have died of thirst 3 weeks earlier BTW, but never mind...). Then what would they have done? These perhaps 6 individuals? They colonized and settled Oz? It would explain the inbreeding among Abo's, though!

Ha! Maybe the reason why they sailed to Oz was exactly the same as the one that compelled them to cross from Afar to Yemen: volcanoes! The Indonesian islands are littered with them. Suppose the volcano on your island blows. You set off for the next island, right? But what if that island's volcano is also erupting? You can't go back, you can't go forward, so you go south and pray to your gods, while fighting off hungry monster sharks (yeah, I know, that's Hemingway).

Digit wrote:Saved me commenting Min, ta!
This might be of interest.

http://www.durolitum.co.uk/articles/curraghs.html

Roy.

Outstanding link-Thanks!

Why would a small band of beach combing hunter gatherers decide to strike out straight across the sea in a flotilla of fucking coracles to paddle 500 kilometers (300 miles) directly south

You have decided they were "beach combers" and constructed an entire hypothesis based on that assertion.


No one else has bought into it.

It doesn't matter what they were, Min. Actually, if they were forest dwellers, or even male flight attendants, that would have only decreased their odds to reach Oz in coracles. Professional beach combers are your best bet in that scenario. And they had been doing that since South Africa.

A "professional" beach comber is just not a concept that I can sign on to.

decreased their odds to reach Oz in coracles.

Coracles are but one form of skin water craft. Umiaks and Curraghs are substantially larger.
Read the link I posted!

Roy.

Obviously you are clueless about sailing on the open ocean.

Obviously you are clueless about sailing on the open ocean.

Absolutely! Along with the Inuit and those who have rowed across the Atlantic as well. None had craft of a quarter a million tonnes displacement. Perhaps you give them too little credit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umiak

http://images.statelibrary.tas.gov.au/F ... 1124852252

You might also wish to raise objections to this?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/430944.stm
They sure as Hell didn't walk!

Roy.