First columbus

[Rokcet Scientist]

Accept that Auks are not known to get near the ice.

Sure. What would you do if your relatives get caught and killed on the ice edge all the time? Even Auks learn!

So if you don't catch a seal you have no food, no heating, no lighting.

So you have to catch something to survive, don't you? Ever seen how easy it is to kill seal pups? It's done by the hundreds of thousands in Canada, every year. 275,000 seal pups to be exact!
And if you can't catch a seal (pup), or an Auk or penguin, you go fishin'! Ice fishing is a very productive way of fishing! Ask Canada's winter anglers!

The Inuit use sledges or boats, they use them to carry stuff, like several hundred pounds of seal meat 'cos you don't wait till you've got nowt to eat before you kill again.

Unless the prey was very much more abundant then than it is today, of course.

Using oil for heating, cooking, lighting, requires that the fat to be rendered, this requires heat! Then you've got to carry that as well.

Ask the Inuit how they do it. The Solutreans did the same. They probably invented it! And the Inuit still benefit today...

The Inuit work from fixed bases for hunting, for long trips, guess what they use RS, boats!

A 'long trip' for Inuit is 50 miles. Even today. You can do that with very small boats with hunters. Not with whole extended families/tribes including females, elders, kids, and all your posessions. And certainly not when the trip was the three thousand miles that the Atlantic is wide.
Besides, where would they have been going? America wasn't a destination, because they didn't even know it existed.

[Minimalist]

Stanford does not give them any credit for organizing a "migration." He sees it as small groups not whole tribes.

[Digit]

So as the Mammoths and other mega fuana didn't die out in Europe for another 7000yrs after the Solutreans made the crossing why did they bother?
Like you said, they didn't know America was there.
And the ice was not known to be a human habitat before the Thule culture, who by the way came from the other direction.
Inuit boats were used for long journeys and were upto some forty feet long, hardly a two man canoe.
And there is no evidence for people, nor stories, for people living on the ice before the Thule and Inuit.
The width of the Atlantic is as many five mile/ fifty mile trips as it takes, same as to Oz.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So as the Mammoths and other mega fuana didn't die out in Europe for another 7000yrs after the Solutreans made the crossing why did they bother?

Opportunism: they discovered sea fauna was much better food and far easier to catch than mega fauna. Sushi!

Like you said, they didn't know America was there.
And the ice was not known to be a human habitat before the Thule culture, who by the way came from the other direction.
Inuit boats were used for long journeys and were upto some forty feet long, hardly a two man canoe.

I can see 20,000 years of evolution developing two-man hide-covered frames into 40 feet boats, can't you?

And there is no evidence for people, nor stories, for people living on the ice before the Thule and Inuit.

Since when is the absence of known evidence proof it didn't happen?

The width of the Atlantic is as many five mile/ fifty mile trips as it takes, same as to Oz.

...where 'they' walked to as well (30,000 to 50,000 years earlier, when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower than today).

[Digit]

Since when is the absence of known evidence proof it didn't happen?

That applies to boats as well.

Because they discovered sea fauna was better food and easier to catch than mega fauna.

You said that mega fuana becoming scarce was the reason, make up your mind.

I can see 20,000 years of evolution developing two-man hide-covered frames into 40 feet boats, can't you?

Yes! But only on the ice if you apply your comment about absence of evidence.

where 'they' walked to as well (30,000 to 50,000 years earlier, when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower than today).

The width of the water is irrelevant, it's the depth that drowns you, and once again you are ignoring the fact that no large animal made it across the Sunda Strait to Oz.
The only species to make was a damn poor swimmer. Homo!

[Rokcet Scientist]

Because they discovered sea fauna was better food and easier to catch than mega fauna.

You said that mega fuana becoming scarce was the reason, make up your mind.

That too. Both factors lead to the same result. In fact, they amplify each other. And it's not either this or that, but all together.

I can see 20,000 years of evolution developing two-man hide-covered frames into 40 feet boats, can't you?

Yes! But only on the ice if you apply your comment about absence of evidence.

'they' walked to as well (30,000 to 50,000 years earlier, when sea levels were hundreds of feet lower than today).

The width of the water is irrelevant, it's the depth that drowns you, and once again you are ignoring the fact that no large animal made it across the Sunda Strait to Oz.
The only species to make was a damn poor swimmer. Homo!

[/quote]

Impossible! Homo's can't swim!

[Digit]

Impossible! Homo's can't swim!

Code: Select all

I said, poor swimmer, not non-swimmer, check my post.

Yes! But only on the ice if you apply your comment about absence of evidence.

Or on land before they started perhaps.

That too. Both factors lead to the same result. In fact, they amplify each other. And it's not either this or that, but all together.

There is no evidence that they were becoming scarce before the Solutreans crossed. If it took them thousands of years to cross how come they still had stone tools to lose in the west? There is no flint etc on the ice shelf. How did the tools look so much like the Solutrean tools, 20000 yrs should have shown some changes

If homo swum the Sunda Trench why no other larger, better swimmers? Another inconvenient point I'm afraid

[Minimalist]

Solutrean artifacts have been found in Virginia. Barring teleportation, they got there somehow.

[kbs2244]

It seems they may have the right idea in the title but the wrong idea for the story.
Columbus was a sailor.

[Digit]

Columbus was a sailor.

True! But how do you suppose the Andaman islanders reached their home some 60000yrs ago?

[Minimalist]

The Club thinks they floated in on natural forming rafts....just as Australia was colonized!

[Digit]

Somebody may be able to help me here Min as I can't remember the source, but I read some time ago that the colonisation of Australia was, according to genetic studies, acomplished by several thousand people.
Doesn't paint an image of desperate survivors staggering ashore from a sinking pile of weeds does it?
The Andamans are the same genetically as the Aeta and Semang of Malaysia and the Phillipines as well as Australia and Tasmania, and it appears that the time between colonisation of the Andamans and Australia was far too short to have been accomplished on foot.
The same point also arises about the time scale taken to colonise the Americas from north to south.
With the Negrito of the Andamans etc they were also known on Taiwan and southern China, but interestingly, never in land.
I wonder what that tells us?

[Minimalist]

Doesn't paint an image of desperate survivors staggering ashore from a sinking pile of weeds does it?

Don't go getting all logical on me now.

[Digit]

What I also find very interesting Min is the level of development of the aboriginal Tasmanians. When my lot got there they wiped them out in what was probably the most total act of genocide ever.
The reason was that they were 'animals', they were the least sophisticated people westerners ever met. Apparently they spread south from northern Australia and reached Tasmania some 35000 yrs ago when it was still part of the mainland
They became isolated some 10000 yrs ago and remained so because they lacked marine travel, as did their neighbours on the mainland. It seems that therefore the colonisation of Australia from north to south must have taken about 30000 yrs, on foot, yet it took only a tiny fraction of that time to spread from the Andamans to Australia or down the length of the Americas, which is a vastly greater distance than N/S of Australia and over much worse terrain.
This makes water travel the only sensible alternative, unless somebody can come up with a different explanation of course.

[Rokcet Scientist]

So let me get that straight:
the people that colonized the Andamans and shortly thereafter Oz were accomplished seafarers. Then they trekked south to Tasmania overland, and when sealevels rose they had suddenly forgotten how their ancestors travelled the high seas for aeons?

That don't jive, bro!



Imo the original Tasmanians – the people that got stranded there at the end of the ice age – by that very fact clearly demonstrated that neither they nor their ancestors ever had even the first clue about negotiating open water!
And when the need for it arose they still weren't capable of developing seafaring skills...

And since Qantas wasn't there yet they can only have walked to Oz. Following the seashores. Beachcombing for (sea) food. On the edge of the water all their lives long. For hundreds of generations. Splashing through the surf collecting mussels and crabs. And (dis)covering new continents almost as 'collateral damage'.
But never more than knee deep.

60,000 years ago there was a landbridge between New Guinea and Oz. And you can still clearly see it today, thanks to Google Earth:



From Wikipedia:

Quote
Indonesia's location on the edges of the Pacific, Eurasian, and Australian tectonic plates, makes it the site of numerous volcanoes and frequent earthquakes. Indonesia has at least 150 active volcanoes, including Krakatoa and Tambora, both famous for their devastating eruptions in the 19th century. The eruption of the Toba supervolcano, approximately 70,000 years ago, was one of the largest eruptions ever, and a global catastrophe.
Unquote

I.o.w. that piece of real estate is the most tectonic/volcanic/seismic active region on the globe. It is in a permanent state of flux. Has been for aeons. Lifting up large tracts of land. Exploding others. Creating and destroying landbridges, coastlines and seashores all the time. Even altering major ocean currents, affecting climates. Creating all sorts of opportunities for enterprising beachcombers to constantly colonize new lands. Only to find themselves stranded on islands when sealevels rose, or landbridges sunk. Hence the different states of floral and fauna evolution in the various parts of the archipelago and Oz.