The First Boat People concerns how people travelled across the world to Australia in the Pleistocene. It traces movement from Africa to Australia, offering a new view of population growth at that time,
Here is a Google book review. It seems well done to me, from the portions that are provided.
I can find some pictures of early boats, including recreations by Bednarik and Heyerdahl.
Therefore, once on Flores, Homo Erectus could move on another 600 kms without getting his feet wet. ...therefore, Homo Erectus's ability to make such a journey could have put him in East Timor.
But does he still have get across that deep water channel?
Therefore, once on Flores, Homo Erectus could move on another 600 kms without getting his feet wet. ...therefore, Homo Erectus's ability to make such a journey could have put him in East Timor.
But does he still have get across that deep water channel?
No. I've just looked on Google Earth and East Timor is past the Lombuk strait.
However, archaeologists have found precious few remains of prehistoric rafts and boats. The oldest such finds, including wooden canoes and paddles, come from northern Europe and date to at most 9,000 years ago.
"A quantum leap in cognition and technology occurred around 900,000 years ago," Bednarik says. "All the traits that fundamentally define modern humans were first developed by Homo erectus."
Our Stone Age ancestors were certainly smart enough to have traversed a nautical obstacle course such as the Lombok Strait, Bednarik contended in the April Cambridge Archaeological Journal. Findings by researchers working in Asia and Africa suggest that rock art, decorative beads, engraved stones, and hunting spears all originated at least several hundred thousand years before the appearance of H. sapiens. Such accomplishments would require that individuals speak to one another and assign abstract meanings to various objects and symbols, in Bednarik's opinion.
He suspects that genetic and cultural evolution played out slowly among human ancestors over the past 2 million years. Groups that moved across Africa and Asia interbred to some extent and passed cultural innovations back and forth.
In this continental melting pot, a hazy biological boundary separated H. erectus from H. sapiens. About 1 million years ago, Stone Age Asians probably congregated near coasts, and their fishing rafts were eventually adapted for sea travel. Remains of these shore inhabitants would have since become submerged and so are unavailable to archaeologists.
This article will be helpful. We first studied Bednariks work in this area about two years ago. If you accept "Erectus Ahoy", then many things make more sense.
Some scientists suspect that small numbers of Stone Age folk accidentally drifted as far as Flores after climbing onto thick mats of vegetation that sometimes form near the Southeast Asian coast.
I wonder if those "scientists" put any thought into what would make someone climb onto a mat of "vegetation" and set out to sea? One would need one hell of a reason in my book.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
Some scientists suspect that small numbers of Stone Age folk accidentally drifted as far as Flores after climbing onto thick mats of vegetation that sometimes form near the Southeast Asian coast.
I wonder if those "scientists" put any thought into what would make someone climb onto a mat of "vegetation" and set out to sea? One would need one hell of a reason in my book.
In recent times monkeys have ended up travelling from one Caribbean Island to another on similar mats of vegetation-circumstances brought about by catastrophic climatic events-it's not out of the realm of possibility that something similar could have happened to humans.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
This book is beautifully written, which helps even an amateur like me to understand this whole subject. I'm reading it in my lunch hour, and thoroughly enjoying it.
The argument against the floating vegetation scenario is that DNA has already established that the migration was by large numbers, relatively, of people.
Smaller animals have always 'rafted', the only species known to have crossed the Sunda are small marsupials that came fro the south, likewise the early 'monkeys' of the new world probably rafted from the old world.
Also, I've been wondering where the theories about population numbers come from.
When I read in this book extract about small population numbers, it immediately triggered the question in my mind 'how do they know the numbers were small?'. But I hate asking these rookie questions because it holds up the debate for you more knowledgeable guys.
Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed.
