Tasmanian Site Discovery

[uniface]

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/20 ... -news.html

A lot of speculative hype at this point, but sounds promising.

[Minimalist]

It's for certain that ancient man did not walk to Tasmania.

[kbs2244]

Are we going to get into an argument about how deep and wide the Bass Srait is and was?

[Minimalist]

Only if Rokcet's feeling ornery.

[Digit]

On a different thread I posted 'cobblers' when the experts spoke about 'Abstract thought', which leads me this point.
Man, in which ever form, must have been a curious animal for much of his time, why else would they have braved the Bass Strait with what must have been a largely empty continent behind them?

Roy.

[Minimalist]

Indeed. Why go anywhere?

This question has popped up before and I don't know that we've ever gotten any sort of satisfactory answer.

What pressure could drive that kind of migration?

[Digit]

Frankly I don't believe it was pressure. For what it's worth I think it was simple curiosity Min.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I doubt that it was any one thing.

Probably a combination of things. Why do people migrate today?

[Digit]

Why do people migrate today?

The simple answer to that Min is the belief that upon arrival their life will better than the one they left.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

If that's all there was too it there would be no one left in Chad, Darfur, etc., etc.


(Or probably Mexico!)

[Digit]

If we'd let them that would possibly be so Min. But not everybody does wish to move, fear of the unknown, being the local 'top of the heap', will keep some at home. Like it not, not everybody is a born explorer, but there will always be a percentage that choses to leave.
My point really Min is that even 60000 yrs ago these people were no different to us today, they had the same drive, the same desires, the same hopes that we do.
They were human!
What drives people beyond the far horizon today was driving our ancestors yesterday.

Roy.

[Minimalist]

I have to go walk the dog which will give me some time to think about this.

I agree that people are people. That's the problem!

[Minimalist]

Okay, you know I agree with you that people were people...even 60,000 years ago. Until shown otherwise I am going to assume that HE evolved into people a long time back. And they had boats.

But there are differences between today and 60,000 BC as far as we know.

First, a Haitian standing on the shore gazing towards Florida KNOWS that Florida is there. He probably has relatives living there. For that matter, a Goth heading west in the 5th century knew that the Roman Empire was ahead of him....and the Huns were behind him. There was trade and diplomatic missions, etc. So the element of venturing into the unknown was not present. We really can't say the same for the guy standing on the south coast of Australia and gazing in the direction of Tasmania. We have no way of knowing what he knew or thought.

Second, there is a difference between climbing a hill to look into the next valley and setting off on a boat onto the open ocean. One can be reasonably certain that there is land on the other side of the hill but can one say the same about a sea voyage? True, a scouting party could be sent but that just means that someone has to go, look around, sail back, convince everyone that things are better in the new place and then everyone has to sail there. Possible? Of course. Likely? I don't know. I wouldn't want to have to figure out the probabilities on that one.

Third, yes I agree that some individuals are adventurous in general groups are not. Daniel Boone went to explore Kentucky. Mrs. Boone stayed home with the kiddies. If I were a leader of a group I would need a hell of a reason to move my entire group (women, children, elders) into the unknown. Those reasons might include famine, drought, the appearance of an enemy, a volcano blowing up, something which threatened the survival of the group. I'm just not persuaded that people would voluntarily move from a place which was meeting their needs without some sort of stimulus.

Fourth, these HG groups are generally considered to have been quite small. Even if someone wanted to go exploring could the group have afforded to let one or two prime hunters take a little trip? If you subtract out the young, the old and the women how many hunters of prime age could there be in a group of maybe 30 people? Five? Six? I don't know. It seems that survival would be dependent on keeping the most productive members of the group around.

Anyway, the dog protested that I seemed distracted on our walk.

[Ishtar]

You didn't mention climate change, Min. That could be a very good reason to move! It almost certainly moved the Dene-Caucasian speakers from the Altai region of Siberia into the Basque region of Spain after the last Ice Age, according to the Palaeolithic Continuity Theory of the Europeans, as this paperand this linguists' map shows.

The red denotes Dene-Caucasian speakers.



Icing up, and then the consequent melt and flood can cause havoc on a global scale ...it can even cause climate change itself ... and there have been many many Ice Ages.



Melting ice in and of itself can cause climate change. This story came out only on Thursday was about the catastrophic drainage in 6500 BCE of ancient Lake Agassiz — a huge meltwater basin that covered nearly half of Canada at the end of the last ice age. They have now found that it sent twice as much water into the sea as previously believed, which caused climate change, and some have cited it as the inspiration for the mythical Great Flood story.

You can read it here: Ice dam broke in 6500 BC causing catastrophic climate change

In fact, going back even further, the evolutionists are beginning to look at the climate change as being the means of providing the revolution that causes evolution, even right down to the cellular level. I'm not sure they're completely right ... there would have been other stresses, like impacts for instance. But climate change must also have been a factor.

As Michael Beckwith said the other day:

"Stand in the middle of a crisis to invite the next stage of evolution to appear."

I know what he means! But I don't want to burden you with my problems!

[Digit]

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

Yaba daba dooo!!
They walked!

It is believed that the island was joined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period approximately 10,000 years ago.

Roy.