Archaeologica.org

As Ann Gibbons writes: “In 1968, a Dutch missionary living on the Indonesian island of Flores found stone tools alongside the bones of an extinct type of elephant called a Stegodon, known to have lived at least 750,000 years ago. The tools meant that the only human species then living in Southeast Asia, Homo erectus, must have been able to cross a biological barrier, called Wallace’s line.” IN: Ann Gibbons, Ancient Island Tools Suggest Homo erectus Was a Seafarer, 279:5357, pp. 1635-1637, Issue of Science, 13 Mar 1998.

The earliest boats were the dug-out. How did the idea emerge to shape a log into a watercraft? Did it happen a million years ago when people may have had occasion to get downstream riding of a floating log and realized that if they hollowed it out it would provide storage space and more comfortable riding? Where the paddle is concerned to propel the canoe, from what I’ve seen, the shoulder blade of the deer is the earliest term used for “paddle” dating back to before the split of the Finn-ugrik language.

Below are some images of [A] dug-out canoes from 8000 years ago, plank ships from nearly 3000 years ago, and [C] a link between shipping, ancient peoples of the Mediterranean, and the colonization of the modern world mostly before medieval times.



http://www.beforebc.de/Related.Subjects ... 1d-01.html


http://www.beforebc.de/Related.Subjects ... 11-04.html


http://www.beforebc.de/all_europe/700_m ... 00-05.html

Robert Bednarik has been an inspiration for several of us around here. Thanks for providing another backup in Gibbons.

http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Bednarik ... 86490.aspx

Some scientists are entertaining the possibility that Bednarik is right. Others are skeptical and cling to the old story. To these, Bednarik taunts, "Armchair archaeologists, who think that sea crossings are a piece of cake, really ought to try doing this on drifting vegetation."

When struck by lightening trees sometimes split down their length, an old one might also have been hollow. 2 plus 2?

Roy.

I'm really, really, really praying that I'm absolutely mistaken in suspecting the presence of a subtext suggesting that the great majority of humanity was too stupid to hollow out a log and make a canoe for itself without being taught this skill by one supposed global 'canoe-inventor' culture.
Please confirm that I'm mistaken.

Ahh - and what of the buildings and stone carvings and mythologies? Sounds like a people that subjucated all of mankind - maybe even - Atlanteans?

I think Bednarik feels that rafts preceded boats.

War Arrow wrote:I'm really, really, really praying that I'm absolutely mistaken in suspecting the presence of a subtext suggesting that the great majority of humanity was too stupid to hollow out a log and make a canoe for itself without being taught this skill by one supposed global 'canoe-inventor' culture.
Please confirm that I'm mistaken.

War Arrow -

Yow.

Once again, we run head-on into the

Multiple Simultaneous Independent Invention Argument

vs.

The global communication of techne argument.

Emphasis on communication.


I believe in global communication,

Instead of Multiple Simultaneous Independent Invention.


Gove me an argument against.


hoka hey

john

I'll give you an argument against, John. It's called 'forest television'.

But even apart from that, why do we assume that these people are at ground zero in terms of intelligence and nous when they survived and flourished in conditions in which none of us could today?

Do we think that ancient man was stupid because he didn't know how to build cities and industries that pollute the airs and seas, and hadn't invented fishing nets so effective that they deplete the seas of fish?

Just because they wouldn't have known how to populate and make calculations on an Excel spreadsheet that to function requires one of the filthiest processes on this planet (i.e. copper smelting) doesn't mean that they wouldn't have known the best way to optimise their own living conditions.

John, imagine this scenario. You and I crash land our plane on a river bank right in the middle of one of the remotest parts of the Amazonian rainforest and the bump on our heads gives us amnesia, so we can't remember much about who we are and how to do stuff. After a day or so, we are very hungry and on the other side of the river, about a 50 metres away, we can see a banana tree with bunches of bananas fully ripened in the sun..

How long do you think it would take us to think up and build a dug-out canoe with the stones and whatever else was lying around. I'd say about half a day tops!

Ishtar's pretty much said what I would have said myself had I got here earlier, John (albeit in more considered form than I might have managed).

Though - "forest television" - je ne comprend pas!

Anyway, my Simpsons version would be that as human beings (irrespective largely of level of cultural development) we're pretty smart, certainly much smarter than monkeys. Plus with so many of us existing over so many generations, there have been quite a few of us walking this earth over the years. And generally, as with any problem (providing you're not expecting the zero to 60 spontaneous creation of a particle accelerator or a Great Unified Theory of Everything) all you need to do is throw enough of us at it for long enough and one of those people will doubtless have an idea of what they could try - so I'm talking monkeys and typewriters but with much better odds.

I have nothing specific against ideas concerning early near-global (?)communication but it is simply that I think they explain something which I hesitantly suggest might not actually require such explanations, plus as Ish suggested - it's a basic faith in humanity thing, the faith that we can innovate without someone from the other side of the hill having to tell us what to do.

I still say that in Ish's scenario we are far more likely to build a raft than to spend the time making a dugout canoe.

Ishtar wrote:I'll give you an argument against, John. It's called 'forest television'.

But even apart from that, why do we assume that these people are at ground zero in terms of intelligence and nous when they survived and flourished in conditions in which none of us could today?

Do we think that ancient man was stupid because he didn't know how to build cities and industries that pollute the airs and seas, and hadn't invented fishing nets so effective that they deplete the seas of fish?

Just because they wouldn't have known how to populate and make calculations on an Excel spreadsheet that to function requires one of the filthiest processes on this planet (i.e. copper smelting) doesn't mean that they wouldn't have known the best way to optimise their own living conditions.

John, imagine this scenario. You and I crash land our plane on a river bank right in the middle of one of the remotest parts of the Amazonian rainforest and the bump on our heads gives us amnesia, so we can't remember much about who we are and how to do stuff. After a day or so, we are very hungry and on the other side of the river, about a 50 metres away, we can see a banana tree with bunches of bananas fully ripened in the sun..

How long do you think it would take us to think up and build a dug-out canoe with the stones and whatever else was lying around. I'd say about half a day tops!

Ishtar -

Let us go back in time a considerable distance. After all, I grew up with the paleontological,

Rather than the archaeological.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26094165/

So, approximateley 50 million years ago

We were tiny tree-dwelling insectivores.

With the interesting characteristics of binocular vision

And some kind of hands.

Fifty million years of history............

Not to mention early primate communication

Leads me to think that we are somewhat hardwired

Neurologically.

Which is to say that species-specific communication and

Optimal survival patterns

Led us to what we now call civilization

Which, for various reasons, is on a route of retrogression

Which will likely eliminate the species,

And possibly the Earth along with it.

Contrary to TS Eliot's statement that

We are likely to go out with a whimper rather than a bang.

My point to your point is

That we all have a "species memory"

- I won't use the word racial -

Of boats, and a bunch of other stuff.

So, despite plane crash and disorientation,

The neurological map kicks in,

Right back to 50m years ago.

Which - fast forward to the present -

Is "Forest Television",

Binocular eyes and hands and all.

The only missing element

Is self-awareness.

And that, my dear,

Is an entirely different argument.


hoka hey


john

The thing that you all missed about my allegorical plane crash in the rain forest is that due to said plane crash, there would be plenty of shards of sharp stuff around to dig out the canoe - none of which would have been available to ancient man.

In order for there to be “Multiple Simultaneous Independent Invention” you need to have people there to do the inventing.
How did they get there?

Ishtar wrote:The thing that you all missed about my allegorical plane crash in the rain forest is that due to said plane crash, there would be plenty of shards of sharp stuff around to dig out the canoe - none of which would have been available to ancient man.

With what they build planes from my money is on the log.

john wrote:I believe in global communication,

Instead of Multiple Simultaneous Independent Invention.


Gove me an argument against.

Why one or the other?
In 99% of these 'cases' it turns out to have been both.