Archaeologica.org

Then there is this

https://www.smh.com.au/national/aborigi ... 4zggl.html

Clearly just another example of vegetation mats providing transport!

Or maybe humans swimming with dolphins?

Or perhaps a race of giants who walked there??

Minimalist wrote:Clearly just another example of vegetation mats providing transport!

Or maybe humans swimming with dolphins?

Or perhaps a race of giants who walked there??

Maybe they hitched a ride on the backs of swimming elephants? (elephants swam to isolated islands too)

I saw that bit.

https://youtu.be/sivmld0X8eE

Minimalist wrote:I saw that bit.

https://youtu.be/sivmld0X8eE

LMAO!!! Hilarious!

But the study authors concede there is a problem with this hypothesis. The Philippines are a fairly isolated chain of islands in the Pacific that, at the time, would have been accessible only by boat. According to the paper, "it still seems too farfetched to suggest" that any early human relative could have made the journey. And yet, the butchered rhino is there.

Mike Morewood found Homo erectus tools on the island of Flores dating to 840,000 years ago. They needed to navigate about 20 miles over a deepwater channel to get there. That isn't a small accomplishment. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... ic-legacy/. Getting to the Philippines would be no more difficult.

Conclusion: Ancient hominids could apparently build rafts and were exploring islands within visible range at a very early date. Rhino steak anyone?

Are you disputing mass transit vegetation mats, Cogs?

Cognito wrote:

But the study authors concede there is a problem with this hypothesis. The Philippines are a fairly isolated chain of islands in the Pacific that, at the time, would have been accessible only by boat. According to the paper, "it still seems too farfetched to suggest" that any early human relative could have made the journey. And yet, the butchered rhino is there.

Mike Morewood found Homo erectus tools on the island of Flores dating to 840,000 years ago. They needed to navigate about 20 miles over a deepwater channel to get there. That isn't a small accomplishment. See: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/ob ... ic-legacy/. Getting to the Philippines would be no more difficult.

Conclusion: Ancient hominids could apparently build rafts and were exploring islands within visible range at a very early date. Rhino steak anyone?

A quotable quote from this article...

Science needs shake-ups—findings that break all the rules, force researchers to reconsider what they thought they knew and remind us all that there is still so much to learn. Nine years after the Liang Bua team introduced the world to H. floresiensis, scholarly papers on it continue to fill the pages of scientific journals, presentations on it still attract standing room-only crowds at anthropology conferences, and the public remains enthralled with our hobbit cousin. No doubt Morwood’s discovery will continue to fire imaginations and inspire new inquiries for many more years to come.

The last paragraph is the most important.

I agree that last paragraph is the most important. And science, after all, is supposed to be self correcting. And while the dates are far younger then the dates highlighted here, this realization that sea faring abilities were present far earlier then earlier consensus opinion, made it easier to not only propose the Pacific Coast Kelp Highway hypothesis as the means of entry into the Americas south of Beringia, but that realization, and the evidence, saw it supplant the ice free corridor as the new consensus view as to how that peopling of the Americas took place. Wood floats. It just is not that huge a leap to go from the knowledge that wood floats to the creation of wooden crafts and travel by sea.

I've always maintained that travel by sea was much safer than travel by land. Sail along the coast, out beyond the breakers, put into shore at night. It's a lot easier to carry stuff in a boat than on your back. Plus, on land every stream crossing would be a chance for someone to drown and every river crossing would require a raft, anyway.

Why put in at night?
That would mean going the difficult surf zone twice.
If it is a calm night, just keep going.

(Isn't the fishing better at night?)