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Stone Tools Found On Crete Push Back Humans' Maritime History
The New York Times reports that stone tools discovered on the Greek island of Crete, and reported last month at an academic conference, are strong evidence for rethinking the maritime capabilities of early humans. The researchers who found the tools (hand-axes, cleavers, and scrapers) estimate them to be at least 130,000 years old; if they're right, humans have been traveling long distances at sea (Crete is 200 miles from the northern African coastline) for at least several tens of thousands of years longer than earlier believed.
...and pretty much have always been.
Humans didn't evolve genetically to this modern technological state, the cleverness has always been inherent.
I knew someone was going to say that.
Many primitive stone tools look like plain rocks at first glance, but there are distinctive chip and wear patterns on tools that just don't occur by chance. An expert will be able to tell you very quickly if you're dealing with an actual tool or just a rock that's assumed a suggestive shape.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
FTA:
Stone tools found on an island indicates that humans were capable of rudimentary sea travel in order to get to Crete from the mainland. Also FTA:
That is an awful lot of stone tools to have just "washed up on to the beach" wouldn't you think so?
TFA states that the team was originally looking for much younger tools on the order of ~11,000 years old when they found these instead. Also FTA:
In other words, the dating of the soil associated with the tools indicates that they are at least 130,000 years old and are of a tool style used by humans/ancestors that is very ancient. The tools were not neccessarily made by early humans as at the time these tools were likely created, humans were not the only hominids. The upper limit for the date of these tools is ~700,000 years which would pre-date modern humans although it seems unlikely that they are that old.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
I'm not so sure the find is suggestive of "maritime capabilities". To prove such a statement, you would have to prove evidence of navigation. Even if it were only celestial navigation, stronger evidence would be to find more than one such remote site with similar styles of survival technology. From the article: More than 2,000 stone artifacts, including the hand axes, were collected on the southwestern shore of Crete, near the town of Plakias. The question, at least for now, should be whether or not they went back.
You highlight the quote - "Crete has been an island for more than five million years"
What part of the quote are you and the GP failing to understand? Why do you both seem to be under the delusion that archeoligists have never heard of ice age migration when archeology was the discipline that discovered it?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
But just because you don't know anything about a subject doesn't mean you have to have opinions about it.
I know there's a joke in here somewhere that includes the words "Uh dude," and "Slashdot," but I can't quite make it out.
Look where all this talking got us, baby.
You can thank sound bites and modern politics for that.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
"Turning a few old tools into a theory that humans were sea travelers a hundred thousand years before previously thought is a stretch."
The article states Crete has been an island for five millions years. It also states that previously the earliest known sea crossings were 60Kya.
How did the tools get there without some species of hominoid crossing the water? 200 miles is a long way to swim, so how did the hominoids cross the water? What makes you think they brought the tools with them? How do you know that quartz is not the only suitable tool making rock found on Crete?
Nobody is suggesting they deliberately navigated to Crete but it's not a streach to think they were "going to sea" in some sort of raft/boat that was used for near shore spear fishing. Nor is it a streach to think a some of them were swept away to sea by currents/storms and ended up accidently colonising Crete.
Science is about the best available explaination that fits the evidence, do you have a better explaination of how hominoids got to Crete other than the one that says they arrived by some sort of prehistoric boat/raft?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Will Durant said, "Civilization is always older than we think. Beneath our feet were also people who lived and loved." Indeed, it never is a good idea to think that we've found everything. Not even close (which is what still gives me hope for FTL travel lol).
Qxe4
Getting to an island that is now ~500 km off shore
Where do you get that number from? Other people are mentioning 200 miles which is also wrong. According to Wikipedia, Crete is only 100 miles (160km) from mainland Greece and looking at the map there are several small islands in between so each single journey by sea might only involve 30 miles or so. If the sea level was lower it is quite likely that there would be more islands sticking out, and if the surface was frozen in the winter, then there is your problem solved without any seafaring technology.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
I'll leave it someone less lazy than I to check if there was an ice age around the time they think the tools were made.
If we assume for the moment that there wasn't, and further assume that there are no islands in between Crete and Greece, I still could be convinced that ancient humans might have made such a voyage. After all, Pacific islanders have been known to make long sea journeys in outrigger canoes without navigational tools. Plus, as TFA states, the human migration to Australia started about 60K years ago, and you can bet nobody walked there.
an undiscovered Greek sea-faring civilization engaging in island-hopping trade among islands within sight of each other than a mysterious African tribe that suddenly invented the boat to colonize the island
Still not comfortable with our African ancestry I see.
McDonald's signs are how Man in four thousand years will discover that the whole world was once globally connected.
There will be debates as the signs are uncovered about whether they could have been formed naturally, but - in the end - it will demonstrate the global society we have today.