The stone “mousterian” tools are unique to Neanderthals and have been found on the islands of Zakynthos, Lefkada and Kefalonia, which range from five to twelve kilometers from mainland Greece. Some, such as Paul Pettitt from the University of Sheffield, suggest they could have swum that far. But that doesn’t explain how similar tools found on the island of Crete got there. That would have meant swimming forty kilometers, which seems extremely unlikely, especially since such swimmers wouldn’t have known beforehand that Crete was there to find. Ferentinos et al suggest the evidence shows that Neanderthals not only figured out how to build boats and sail but did so quite extensively well before modern humans ever got the idea. They say because the tools found on the islands are believed to date back 100,000 years (and the islands have been shown to have been islands back then as well) Neanderthal people were sailing around that long ago. Thus far, evidence for modern humans sailing dates back to just 50,000 years when they made their way to Australia. If true, that would mean Neanderthal people were sailing around in the Mediterranean for fifty thousand years before modern people built their first boat. Others have suggested that hominids have been sailing for as long as a million years; stone tools found on the Indonesian island of Flores date back that far. It could be that both modern humans and Neanderthals were boating around for hundreds of thousands of years and we just don’t have any evidence of it because the boats back then would have been made of wood and evidence of their existence would have decayed to nothing long ago. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-evidence-neanderthals-boats-modern-humans.html
Fascinating. But if you think about it, boats are not that complex a technology at the basic level. Just a floating raft of logs would work. Even apes have figured it out! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Neandertals were humans, just slightly different than us. And those differences were more a matter of degree, not of kind. Even the higher apes(chimps, bonobos, ourangatangs and gorillas)are as intelligent as our own children(who we consider completely human). The idea that man is unique in these abilities is dead wrong, we see the same abilities in many animal species, just to a lesser degree than in man. GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Those who have studied Neanderthal physiology say that their bodies were much denser than ours, and therefore not buoyant. This would have made it exhausting for them to swim very far, and therefore doubtful that they deliberately spent much time in deep water. I find this amazing, since they were so well adapted to cold climates. In fact this is often suggested as a primary reason for their decline: As the ice age ended, they no longer had a survival advantage over H. sapiens in Europe. There are two ways in which most animals adapt to colder weather: 1. Grow larger so the ratio of mass to surface area is greater; 2. Develop a layer of fat, which is a very effective insulator. Neanderthals weren't any bigger than us, so I always assumed they must have had more body fat to withstand the cold. As for how they crossed the water, don't forget that in an ice age a much larger percentage of the world's water is locked up in the glaciers and ice caps. 20KYA, sea level was about 250ft/80m lower than it is today. This means that oceans, seas, lakes and rivers were narrower, since more of the land was above water. The coast of Virginia, for example, was a full 25mi/40km further east from its current location, and in fact artifacts of human settlement were recently discovered out there, shaking the assumption that humans did not arrive in the New World until 12-15KYA--and that they came from Asia. This made traversing those waterways considerably easier that it is today. This is, in fact, one possible reason for the successful migration to Australia 60KYA. That was the low point in an ice age and sea level was at an even lower depth. All those islands in Polynesia and Oceania were much bigger and therefore much closer together than they are today. Hopping from one to the other, and all the way to Australia, was not as big a challenge as it would be now.
More body fat would mean they were better in cold water. Most long distance swimmers are on the fat side.
It seems the reason the investigator(s) are suggesting boats is that they have reason to believe the tools were brought into these islands, and presumably any bouyancy they might have enjoyed by swimming would have been offset by the ballast. Another reason for inferring boats is that Neanderthal tools have been found on Crete, and it does not seem humanly Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! possible to swim that far. H. Sapiens may have acquired the same style of toolmaking from contact with the Neanderthals, but these finds are believed to be Neanderthal. They are 100 kYA, or about twice as old as the migration into Australia. However, other tools have been found on the island of Flores, Indonesia, about three times as old as the first Neanderthal. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
H. Sapiens may have acquired the same style of toolmaking from contact with the Neanderthals, but these finds are believed to be Neanderthal. They are 100 kYA, or about twice as old as the migration into Australia. However, other tools have been found on the island of Flores, Indonesia, about three times as old as the first Neanderthal. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image![/QUOTE] What do you mean by 3 time ===== the age Neanderthal wondered im Europa of some thing else ?
The investigator is using 300 kYA as the estimate for the appearance of the first true Neanderthal. The Flores tools appeared about 1 MYA. http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100317/full/464335a.html
Would this give a competition to the theory that modern man evolved in Africa and Davidew could be a descendent from the Flores man ?
I don't understand "Davidew". What does that mean? I don't see how Flores changes the fact that hominids are rooted in Africa long before 1 MYA. To me this is just an unusual consequence of the random nature of discovery. Next year and the year after there will be more finds. I can't imagine how a pre-African culture could remain buried so long. Besides, Africa gives such an extensive panorama of evolution from such primitive forms to the advanced toolmaking forms, that African origins seem invincible.
Not really ... the DNA evidence for African origins is rock solid. Given that the Neanderthals had stone tools in hand, I think their building dugout canoes is probably a "simpler" explanation than their swimming 40 km. The latter requires an explanation of why people would set out swimming toward the open sea (Crete is not visible from the mainland), and stick with it for such a distance.
Have you taken into account the sea level was shallower then now by perhaps 100 meter and that from shore to shore might be less the 40 Km.
And remember the Mediterranean sea is one of highest salt content and at Neanderthals time the seal level was low so the salinity would be even higher so the water density was high and been fat that would help even more
Then there is this migration To trace the evolution and ancestry of humans, scientists study the DNA sequence of the mitochondria, a specialized cellular structure that produces energy for the cell and carries genetic information that is separate from the rest of the genome that resides in the nucleus. While the nuclear genome is a mix of genetic information from both mother and father, the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) is passed directly from mother to child without any contribution of DNA from the father. But not everyone's mtDNA is exactly alike: over long periods of time, small changes in the mtDNA sequence have arisen in different populations. Geneticists can use these changes as markers that indicate the movements and migrations of humans in the past, and classify them into specific "haplogroups." In this study, an international team of researchers performed the largest analysis of complete mtDNA genomes belonging to haplogroup L (a lineage of sub-Saharan Africa origin) in Europe to date, aiming to untangle the history of genetic links between the two contents. By comparing the sequences of mtDNA genomes from various regions of Europe with mitochondrial genomes from around the world, they made a very surprising observation regarding when sub-Saharan lineages appeared in Europe. "It was very surprising to find that more than 35 percent of the sub-Saharan lineages in Europe arrived during a period that ranged from more than 11,000 years ago to the Roman Empire times," said Dr. Antonio Salas of the University of Santiago de Compostela and senior author of the study. The other 65% of European haplogroup L lineages arrived in more recent times. The authors explain that these contacts likely connected sub-Saharan Africa to Europe not only via North Africa, but also directly by coastal routes. Salas said that it still remains unknown why there was genetic flow between the Africa and Europe in prehistoric times, but one possible scenario is that some bidirectional flow was promoted when the last glaciation pushed some Europeans southward, until the glacier receded and populations returned north. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-03-genetic-unravels-ancient-links-african.html
Yes, but what kind of boats? Yes, but what kind of boats? I mean that Chimps are found all over Africa, pretty much. Now how did they get across rivers? Sure they could have gone to the headwaters, technically, but species time and time again get swept away in a flood and land on the other side. Similar to nearby islands, Homo Erectus and Neanderthal people would get caught in a storm, float away on a tree, and land, an entire clan or so, over thousands of years. This is especially true in the case of tropical cyclones. From there, one gets used to using primitive rafts. One can see this in the fictional 1936 novel, based on the old Polynesian strategy when typhoons surge up to 60 feet above sea level on rare occasions, of Hurricane (Nordhoff and Hall). The main characters tie themselves to a floating palm or tree and survive the hurricane long away from the island. Same is so with rivers. Needing new grounds to follow better animal hunting grounds, rivers in southern areas would require primitive rafts or even a bit rotten log (e.g. better floatation than a fresher one, but not enough to decay strength and break up in the middle of crossing the Po River). Northern Rivers were easier during most of the time, freezing solid during the winters excepting interglacial periods. Now it gets tricky in larger expanses or tricky currents flowing away from land. This means the Gibraltar Strait would be a end game for most Neanderthals, as it turned out for the entire race. Unless you time the winds just right, you will never make it, in vector analysis, meaning putting in upstream 20 kilometers due west when there is a strong due south wind in the hottest of summer (like Scotland hot, during that part of the ice ages in Southern Spain I guess). Fogs might have also been common then, a complicating factor for anyone familiar with the Golden Gate. The Bosphorus is only a kilometer across over 20 kilometers compared to 10 or so kilometers for a very short stretch, and Neanderthals/Cro Magon did it when apparently it was at best a river of a hundred meters or dry land. The Kangaroo/Flinders/King Islanders were stranded with the post Ice Age rise in sea level, or maybe escaped in the case of Kangaroo. I think King Islands died out, and Tasmanian Aborigines were genetically inbred so to fall like flies even more than the regular Aborigines (no purebreds were alive 70 years after first whites settled). But that was only 6,000 years in a rough strait. Flores Island would have been a much easier sail. Aborigine boats only could go about 6 miles before becoming waterlogged, until apparently Malay influence introduced better boats about 1650, spreading quickly south. No problem for getting across the rather narrow rivers during dry seasons, for the Aborigines in their tribal areas. The point is there is a big difference between rough log rafts in the wind (or downward river currents) and better, regular rafts. Neanderthals were likely better at somethings than us and less so in ways that proved through chance events to be critical in the ultimate survival. Fires were, IIRC, roughly made events, for example. Boats would very possibly be similar in that they were at best irregular items only when in pretty ideal situations. This means if wind was used at all, it was in hot temperatures, limited cargo, perfect winds, in enclosed seas or gentler rivers. And some Cro Magnons, like the Aborigines, were not stellar in their boats, either. The Indonesian proto species had great need to trade across then short straits in warm seas and could see the lands in the distance, a very different driving mechanism. The Arawak Indians (or Ciboney) came only about 1,500 BC to the Caribbean. This means it took at least 10,000 years to jump the 50 to 100 miles for contact, in many locations from modern day Florida to Venezuela, or less in cases of before the seas rose, with slack waves often observed in some locations. Unlike Chimps, we would have remembered how to use boats much longer, on average, and spread the use of the same. This is true for any recent species of Man, I would guess. Chimps vary very much in tools, culture, etc, and spread less than man has in this cultural area, though it happens with man as well. And so on, but enough for an already too long post!
