Ancient Hominids May Have Been Seafarers

[skunk]

Witch hunt originally posted this in another thread, but I thought this article deserved a bit more attention than it was receiving.

I'm still convinced we're much older as a species than we think we are, but this is a cool article nonetheless.

Ancient Hominids may have been seafarers (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53219/title/Ancient_hominids_may_have_been_seafarers)

Hand axes excavated on Crete suggest hominids made sea crossings to go 'out of Africa'


Human ancestors that left Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago to see the rest of the world were no landlubbers. Stone hand axes unearthed on the Mediterranean island of Crete indicate that an ancient Homo species — perhaps Homo erectus — had used rafts or other seagoing vessels to cross from northern Africa to Europe via at least some of the larger islands in between, says archaeologist Thomas Strasser of Providence College in Rhode Island.

Several hundred double-edged cutting implements discovered at nine sites in southwestern Crete date to at least 130,000 years ago and probably much earlier, Strasser reported January 7 at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Archaeology. Many of these finds closely resemble hand axes fashioned in Africa about 800,000 years ago by H. erectus, he says. H. erectus had spread from Africa to parts of Asia and Europe by at least that time.

Until now, the oldest known human settlements on Crete dated to around 9,000 years ago. Traditional theories hold that early farming groups in southern Europe and the Middle East first navigated vessels to Crete and other Mediterranean islands at that time.

“We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place,” Strasser says. The traditional view has been that hominids (specifically, H. erectus) left Africa via land routes that ran from the Middle East to Europe and Asia. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.

Questions remain about whether African hominids used Crete as a stepping stone to reach Europe or, in a Stone Age Gilligan’s Island scenario, accidentally ended up on Crete from time to time when close-to-shore rafts were blown out to sea, remarks archaeologist Robert Tykot of the University of South Florida in Tampa. Only in the past decade have researchers established that people reached Crete before 6,000 years ago, Tykot says.

Strasser’s team cannot yet say precisely when or for what reason hominids traveled to Crete. Large sets of hand axes found on the island suggest a fairly substantial population size, downplaying the possibility of a Gilligan Island’s scenario, in Strasser’s view.

In excavations conducted near Crete’s southwestern coast during 2008 and 2009, Strasser’s team unearthed hand axes at caves and rock shelters. Most of these sites were situated in an area called Preveli Gorge, where a river has gouged through many layers of rocky sediment.

At Preveli Gorge, Stone Age artifacts were excavated from four terraces along a rocky outcrop that overlooks the Mediterranean Sea. Tectonic activity has pushed older sediment above younger sediment on Crete, so 130,000-year-old artifacts emerged from the uppermost terrace. Other terraces received age estimates of 110,000 years, 80,000 years and 45,000 years.

These minimum age estimates relied on comparisons of artifact-bearing sediment to sediment from sea cores with known ages. Geologists are now assessing whether absolute dating techniques can be applied to Crete’s Stone Age sites, Strasser says.

Intriguingly, he notes, hand axes found on Crete were made from local quartz but display a style typical of ancient African artifacts.

“Hominids adapted to whatever material was available on the island for tool making,” Strasser proposes. “There could be tools made from different types of stone in other parts of Crete.”

Strasser has conducted excavations on Crete for the past 20 years. He had been searching for relatively small implements that would have been made from chunks of chert no more than 11,000 years ago. But a current team member, archaeologist Curtis Runnels of Boston University, pointed out that Stone Age folk would likely have favored quartz for their larger implements. “Once we started looking for quartz tools, everything changed,” Strasser says.

[Lexion]

Cool read.

Thanks.

[Hazelnut]

I just love how history can be rewritten and reassembled based on new research and/or hypotheses.

One of my favorite authors, Jean Auel, has created wonderful story from a collection of anthropology, archaeology, and sociology during the last ice-age Europe. She writes about the clash of modern man and neanderthal on the continent and how one diverged to become us and the other died out.

[anarch]

I support the out of Australia theory. I am of the mind that humanity proly evolved on around the islands just to the north of Australia and Australia proper. We proly invented the boat before we invented the wheel. It seems to me the idea of a floating log is easier to come across than the wheel making work easier.

[Cogburn]

It seems to me the idea of a floating log is easier to come across than the wheel making work easier.

What happens if you're the type of person that is more interested in a stick floating on water than a rock rolling downhill?

Add the fact that one needs to be possessing of the ability to then make such knowledge practical, and suddenly the majority of the developments in history aren't quite that miraculous or mysterious.

If one man is in possession of an insight that cannot be made use of, will the world ever know?

The history of technological advancement isn't quite what you might think it is.

UtWVfTiQQW8

[skunk]

He does have a point about shipbuilding being easier than the construction of the wheel, although I do not agree with his out of Australia theory.

It makes a heck of a lot more sense to travel great distances over water than it does land.

[Cogburn]

What is a "wheel"? Is it a round disc connected to an axle, or is it an appreciation for the ability of a rounded object to be utilized as a force multiplier?

Evidence for such use goes back to the monolith cultures rolling stones over logs. No greater level of appreciation is required for the buoyancy of wood leading to the hollowing of a tree.

Did the south Pacific cultures develop boats before the wheel because it was easier or because they lived near so much water? What is of greater use to you on the plains of Oklahoma or the mountains of Asia: a rolling log or a floating one?

The difference is only in what is most valuable to you and the method of survival developed by your culture.

[anarch]

The history of technological advancement isn't quite what you might think it is.

Perhaps. I still think nothing breeds technological advancement like conflict.

Still the concept of riding on a log, tieing a few logs together, or hollowing out a log....It seems like an easy idea to grasp and to expand upon especially if your an intelligent creature. Also your right about the water. If a culture is not around water then they are not gonna observe anything floating and will not stumble on the idea of flotation.

As for my out of Australia theory... I would be a believer in the aquatic ape theory. The place seems likely suited to produce such a thing maybe the south pacific. I have to wonder if the same study for mutations done on Africans has been applied to the Abos.

[Cogburn]

It has, and +1 for you for having an intuitive leap that is supported by scientific fact, you just have it a little backwards.


Genetic tests on Australian fossils suggest Aborigines did migrate out of Africa
May 8, 2007

Australia – along with the rest of the world – was first settled by a single group of settlers who left Africa more than 55,000 years ago, DNA research suggests.

Once there, they apparently evolved in relative isolation, developing genetic characteristics and technology found nowhere else until the arrival of the first European settlers.

The uniqueness of Australia’s ancient Aborigines and archaeological finds on the continent have previously threatened to undermine the “out of Africa” hypothesis of human origins favoured by most experts.

But the latest research by geneticists at the University of Cambridge reinforces the theory that all modern human beings belonging to the species Homo sapiens are descended from a small number of Africans who left their home between 55,000 and 60,000 years ago.

According to the fossil record, Homo sapiens emerged as a new species about 120,000 years ago in central East Africa.

It is thought to have migrated from there into the Middle East, southern Africa, Europe, central Asia, and the New World, replacing older human species such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus in the process.

Critics of this theory say that modern human beings may have evolved in a number of different places, arisen through interbreeding, or made several trips out of Africa.

Their main evidence comes from Australia, where skeletal and tool remains are strikingly different from those on the “coastal expressway” route the early settlers are supposed to have taken through south Asia.

Some anthropologists have argued that this is evidence against the idea of a single common origin for modern-day humans.

But a study of DNA samples from Aboriginal Australians and Melanesians from New Guinea appears to verify the single migration theory.

Both populations were found to share genetic features linking them and other Eurasians to the exodus from Africa more than five millennia earlier.

Their ancestors would have travelled to Australia via Arabia, Asia and the Malay peninsula, dispersing at a rate of about one kilometre a year, according to Peter Forster, who led the Cambridge research, which is reported today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Dr Forster, who is now at Anglia Ruskin University, said yesterday: “Although it has been speculated that the populations of Australia and New Guinea came from the same ancestors, the fossil record differs so significantly it has been difficult to prove.

“For the first time, this evidence gives us a genetic link showing that the Australian Aboriginal and New Guinean populations are descended directly from the same specific group of people who emerged from the African migration.”

The scientists found no evidence of any interbreeding with Homo erectus, Australia’s original inhabitants.

The timing of Ice Age coolings, and the amount that they lowered ocean levels, specifies the geological periods in which it was possible to migrate to land masses otherwise separated by water.

Fifty thousand years ago Australia and New Guinea were joined by a land bridge, which became submerged 8,000 years ago. Early settlers could have reached New Guinea across narrow straits, which were all that separated the region from the main Eurasian land mass.

The DNA patterns suggest that there was little gene flow into the region after the migration. That Australian and Melanesian populations evolved on their own explains why some of their shared features are so unusual, the scientists say.

Toomas Kivisild, from the Department of Biological Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, who co-authored the paper, said: “The evidence points to relative isolation after the initial arrival, which would mean any significant developments in skeletal form and tool use were not influenced by outside sources.”

The origins of Man

— In 1924 Raymond Dart discovered a specimen later known as Taung Child, an australopithecine infant discovered at Taung, South Africa. Various traits convinced Dart that the baby was a bipedal human ancestor, a transitional form between apes and humans

— Lucy, a 1.1m-tall adult skeleton of a human ancestor, or hominid, that lived up to 3.6 million years ago, was discovered in Hadar, Ethiopia, in the 1970s

— “Millennium Man”, or Orrorin, was unearthed in Kenya last year by scientists who claimed he was Man’s earliest known relative

Mitochondrial Genome Variation and Evolutionary History of Australian and New Guinean Aborigines
To study the evolutionary history of the Australian and New Guinean indigenous peoples, we analyzed 101 complete mitochondrial genomes including populations from Australia and New Guinea as well as from Africa, India, Europe, Asia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. The genetic diversity of the Australian mitochondrial sequences is remarkably high and is similar to that found across Asia. This is in contrast to the pattern seen in previously described Y-chromosome data where an Australia-specific haplotype was found at high frequency. The mitochondrial genome data indicate that Australia was colonized between 40 and 70 thousand years ago, either by a single migration from a heterogeneous source population or by multiple movements of smaller groups occurring over a period of time. Some Australian and New Guinea sequences form clades, suggesting the possibility of a joint colonization and/or admixture between the two regions.

Previous Section
Next Section
The continent of Australia has been separate from Asia since the late Cretaceous, approximately 70 million years ago. However, lower sea levels during the upper Pleistocene merged the Malay Peninsula with Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and Bali to form what is generally known as “Sunda Land”. At the same time, mainland Australia, Tasmania, and New Guinea were joined into a single landmass, called “Sahul Land” (Fig. 1). Although Sunda and Sahul have remained separate during the period of modern human evolution and migration, sea distances connecting them would have been reduced to several island hops of between 30 and 90 km (Klein 1989). Because Australia and New Guinea were joined from before the time of human colonization until about 8000 years ago (Bellwood 1978a), it is possible that the indigenous peoples of these regions result from the same migration. A date for initial human settlement of the Australian continent of 10,000 years ago was defendable as recently as the mid-1960s (Klein 1989). Through the re-dating of the Lake Mungo skeletal remains (Thorne et al. 1999; Bowler et al. 2003) and as a result of several other studies (Roberts et al. 1990, 1994, 2001), a date of 40,000–60,000 years ago is now generally accepted. The only estimate of a genetic coalescent for Australian Aborigines with individuals from outside Australia is based on mitochondrial HVS1 sequences and ranges from 60,000–119,000 years ago, depending on which substitution rate is used (van Holst Pellekaan et al. 1998). In addition, an expansion date of 51,000–85,000 years ago for Australian Aborigines was estimated from mitochondrial D-loop sequences (Redd and Stoneking 1999). Mitochondrial DNA has proven to be a useful tool in studying the evolutionary history of human populations through key characteristics such as high copy number, lack of recombination (Olivio et al. 1983; Ingman et al. 2000), high substitution rate (Brown et al. 1979), and maternal mode of inheritance (Giles et al. 1980). Although the mitochondrial D-loop offers a convenient source of polymorphic data, it also has a high incidence of parallel mutations (Tamura and Nei 1993; Ingman and Gyllensten 2001) and mutation “hotspots” (Wakeley 1993). Previous studies of sequence variation in the coding region of the mitochondrial genomes of Australian Aborigines have been restricted to Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) data (Cann et al. 1987; Stoneking et al. 1990; Huoponen et al. 2001). Analyses based on the information content of the entire mitochondrial genome sequence may provide novel insight into the evolutionary history of Australia.


Spoiler contains big image of genomic "family tree" of Australian aboriginals.
http://genome.cshlp.org/content/13/7/1600/F2.large.jpg

[anarch]

Well, then... An interesting read to be sure.

[WITCH HUNT]

What is a "wheel"? Is it a round disc connected to an axle, or is it an appreciation for the ability of a rounded object to be utilized as a force multiplier?

Evidence for such use goes back to the monolith cultures rolling stones over logs.

True that, but there is no evidence that Meso-American cultures had used the wheel in construction. Not even at Machu Pichu!

[mojo]

i'm almost certain our ancestors were plying the oceans of the world long before academia is willing to admit.

evidence in the past 2 years has proven polynesians for instance were trading with sth america a thousand years before the commonly accepted timelines.

and theres very little in the way of evidence imo to prove without a shadow of doubt that our species all "came out of africa".
though it does make things much tidier for the scholars.

[Cogburn]

though it does make things much tidier for the scholars.

I dunno how much denial really goes on in 2010.

Genetics has so far infused itself into anthropological studies that the genes tell stories that suffer from a distinct lack of petrified boats as evidence.

[skunk]

https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/index.html

[mojo]

Genetics has so far infused itself into anthropological studies that the genes tell stories that suffer from a distinct lack of petrified boats as evidence.

http://www.archaeology.org/9703/etc/specialreport.html (http://www.archaeology.org/9703/etc/specialreport.html)

Southeast Asia and Australia give archaeologists some of the best evidence for ancient sea crossings, not just by Palaeolithic humans but also by Neolithic peoples and even spice traders contemporary with the Roman Empire. New discoveries, some controversial, are pushing back the dates of human colonization of this region and are expanding our knowledge of early island networks. These finds are also illuminating the first steps in some of the longest prehistoric open-sea voyages of colonization on record--from Southeast Asia to Polynesian islands such as Hawaii, Easter Island, and New Zealand, and perhaps also from Indonesia to Madagascar--during the first millennium A.D.
To understand the implications of these discoveries, one must be aware that the Indo-Malaysian Archipelago contains two very different biogeographical regions. The western islands on the Sunda Shelf--Sumatra, Java, Bali, and Borneo--were joined to each other and to the Asian mainland by landbridges during glacial periods of low sea level. Hence they supported rich Asian placental mammal faunas and were colonized by Homo erectus, perhaps as early as 1.8 million years ago. The eastern islands--Sulawesi, Lombok, Flores, Timor, the Moluccas, and the Philippines--have never been linked by landbridges to either the Sunda Shelf or Australia, or to each other. They had limited mammal faunas, chance arrivals from Asia and Australasia.
Migration through the archipelago has always required that humans cross substantial stretches of open sea. But when did they first attempt to do this? There is a current controversial claim by a joint Dutch-Indonesian team that humans were contemporaries of stegodons, extinct elephant-like animals, at a site called Mata Menge on the Indonesian island of Flores. Stone flakes and stegodon bones have been found here in presumed association in deposits located just above a reversal of the earth's magnetic field dating to 730,000 years ago. Should this claim receive future support we will have to allow for the possibility that even Homo erectus was able to cross open sea, in this case the 15-mile-wide Strait of Lombok between Bali and Lombok.


http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dna-from-chicken-bone-shows-polynesians-found-south-america-451758.html (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/dna-from-chicken-bone-shows-polynesians-found-south-america-451758.html)

A chicken bone has provided anthropologists with the strongest evidence yet to suggest that Polynesians sailed to South America before the discovery of the New World by Europeans.
The possibility that Polynesians had direct contact with the indigenous people of South America has long intrigued experts on ancient human migrations, but hard evidence has been difficult to come by. However, a study by scientists from New Zealand and Chile has now shown that chickens may have been introduced into South America by Polynesians sailing from the west rather than Europeans coming from the east.


boats as evidence aren't necesarily required.

[lala]

And their this to . . . :D


. Principal DNA Report relied upon
(a) Title: Using Genes to Reconstruct Human History in Polynesia (please refer to Bibliography)
(b) Author: Dr Geoffrey Chambers and colleagues.

2. Précis of the Report’s findings
(As reported by David Knight 07.04.03). Mt DNA shows female line is almost entirely Asian whilst Y chromosome DNA shows males came from Papua New Guinea.

3. Corroboration or supporting DNA Reports
(i) New Zealand South Island was a Chinese settlement from the Han dynasty (220 B.C. – 212 A.D.) for 2000 years before Captain Cook arrived

4. Corroboration or supporting reports into ailments or diseases which suggest Chinese arrived by sea – as set out in this Synopsis.

5. Did the first Europeans to reach the area in which the Maori people live find Chinese already there?
Records say that the Maoris had met earlier seafarers in New Zealand.

6. Other evidence showing links with China
(a) Principal
Plants and animals which are foreign to New Zealand yet were already there when the first Europeans arrived.
(b) Secondary links with China
(i) The Ruapuke wreck and associated Chinese artefacts
(ii) Campbell and Auckland Islands are shown on the Jean Rotz chart two centuries before Cook arrived.

7. Evidence in Synopsis of Evidence on website www.gavinmenzies.net (http://www.gavinmenzies.net/).
Paras , 3, 4, 8-12, 15, 16, 18, 20.

8. Reference in 1421 The Year China Discovered America

http://www.gavinmenzies.net/pages/evidence-1421/content.asp?EvidenceID=138

[lala]

Plus here a link for "ancient celtic / scottish viking sites in new zealand."
which I found interesting . . . :D
http://www.kilts.co.nz/Mhorruairidh.htm

[mojo]

Plus here a link for "ancient celtic / scottish viking sites in new zealand."
which I found interesting . . . :D
http://www.kilts.co.nz/Mhorruairidh.htm

theres also the possibility of phoenician settlements in australia.

don't have links handy, most are crappy sites but i did find one with corroborating evidence ages ago.

but seafaring hominids upto 100,000 years ago or longer isn't that hard to imagine, in fact i think it would be more surprising if we weren't.

[UtopianPenguin]

This seems to be pretty accurate in my opinion so far.
The documentary was A good watch too.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

[lala]

theres also the possibility of phoenician settlements in australia.

don't have links handy, most are crappy sites but i did find one with corroborating evidence ages ago.

but seafaring hominids upto 100,000 years ago or longer isn't that hard to imagine, in fact i think it would be more surprising if we weren't.


Agreed Mojo . . . I remember that they found tall red head skeleton over here which I'm sure have been posted here . . . .There stories of a tall white race and a very small white race that lived here also with the maori long before cap cook . . . .a lot of bones were just ground up as they were not maori burial site. The maori land claim would be up shit creek if it proven white people where here long before.

I'll watch that doco tonight thanks Utop, looks very interesting :D

[mojo]

The maori land claim would be up shit creek if it proven white people where here long before.



yeah. it's pretty sad day when politics is more important than finding the truth.
isn't it much the same with native american sites in the US?

[Cogburn]

yeah. it's pretty sad day when politics is more important than finding the truth.
isn't it much the same with native american sites in the US?

Not so much.

The U.S. government treated (most) every Indian nation as a sovereign nation, and rightly so.

Agreements and legislation to this day are specific to the Indian nation that negotiated the original treaties.

It's a fucking quagmire that denies any sort of easy classification.

Arguments over one burial site or another vary from nation to nation that lays claim to them.

[mojo]

Saw this documentary last night on the mystery remains found at Palau in 2008.
Very interesting.

Not so much interested in the evolutionary theory's but more in regards to the fact that it is further evidence imo of Trans oceanic voyages being made by humans much earlier than previously thought.

First some background on the Palau discovery.

channel.nationalgeographic.com (http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/mystery-skulls-of-palau-3398/facts)

DEMYSTIFYING HUMAN EVOLUTION
Palau is a remote tropical island in the Pacific, 500 miles from any other land mass. 21,000 people live on the main islands of Palau, but there are also hundreds of additional uninhabited small islands. Modern man, Homo sapiens, evolved 195,000 years ago, but the first inhabitants of Palau were only thought to have arrived 3,000 years ago after traveling east from Indonesia. New discoveries change this thinking.

In 2004, Homo floresiensis was discovered on the Island of Flores. Dubbed the ‘hobbits’, they were tiny humans that were thought to have lived on the island from 95,000 years ago until at least 13,000 years ago, and to have shared a common ancestor with modern humans.
Lee Berger, one of National Geographic’s elite scientists, has made another groundbreaking discovery relatively close to Flores, on the islands of Palau — caves full of fossilized human bones. They look very different than anything that has ever been discovered before, and could change theories on human evolution.
The remains were found embedded in limestone and flowstone in the caves of Palau. The flowstone is created by water flowing slowly over the cave floor over many years; it is built up layers of calcium carbonate (calcite).
Modern humans are thought to have evolved in Africa then migrated around the world around 100,000 years ago. This is known as the ‘Out of Africa’ model of evolution. Humans on the earth today have distinct differences to our ancestors. Modern humans have evolved a chin, reduced brow ridges, a big brain to body size and relatively small teeth in relation to the size of the head.
The human remains found on Palau indicate a very bizarre looking people — they were very robust for their size, had pronounced brow ridges, terrible teeth and were very small — fully grown adults of just 3.5 to 4 feet tall (This is the height of an average 5-year-old child today)! They are some of the smallest human beings ever found.
The discovery in Palau could be the biggest find of Lee Berger’s career. There is not just one fossilized skeleton, but hundreds of fossilized bones, found in two separate caves on different islands.
For centuries, legends have existed in Palau about the location of Lee Berger’s discovery. In these legends, the cave, known as Ucheliungs cave, is said to be the birthplace of the Palauan people.
Carbon dating is used to analyze the breakdown of carbon in organic materials such as bones to estimate their age. The time since an organism died can be estimated by measuring the amount of radiocarbon in its remains. Carbon dating results showed that the people lived just 1,500 to 3,000 years ago — ten thousand years more modern than the Flores hobbits.
These small people of Palau, living at the same time as ancient civilizations of modern humans, would have had a physiologically tough existence. At this time there were no mammals or reptiles on the islands, and no edible plants other than coconut and betelnut. The people would have been on the edge of survival, living by fishing and scavenging.
The theory is that they are Homo sapiens who evolved over an incredibly short period of time, their bodies and brain cavities shrinking to accommodate a lack of protein and other basic nutrients. This has been seen in mammals, known as island dwarfing, when large mammals get smaller over succeeding generations. The theory is backed by the presence of big teeth. Teeth are evolutionarily conservative and follow body size reduction in most cases.
The fastest known rate of evolution in vertebrates occurs in cichlid fish — they have been known to evolve into two genetically distinct varieties in less than 20 years.
Palau has hundreds of other islands, and underwater caves that are relatively unexplored — it is possible that more caves will be found that contain more fossilized human bones.




Video.


channel.nationalgeographic.com/video (http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/mystery-skulls-of-palau-3398/facts#tab-Videos/05134_00)

www.plosone.org/article (Research Article) (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001780)

Recent surface collection and test excavation in limestone caves in the rock islands of Palau, Micronesia, has produced a sizeable sample of human skeletal remains dating roughly between 940-2890 cal ybp.


Preliminary analysis indicates that this material is important for two reasons. First, individuals from the older time horizons are small in body size even relative to "pygmoid" populations from Southeast Asia and Indonesia, and thus may represent a marked case of human insular dwarfism. Second, while possessing a number of derived features that align them with Homo sapiens, the human remains from Palau also exhibit several skeletal traits that are considered to be primitive for the genus Homo.


Palau is situated among the Western Caroline Islands on the western Pacific rim, approximately 600 km from the nearest large landmasses (Papua New Guinea to the south and the Philippines to the west). The islands that comprise the Palauan archipelago are dominated by the large, volcanic island of Babeldaob, but also include, to the south of the capital of Koror, hundreds of islets and islands of raised limestone that are colloquially known as the "rock islands" [5] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Dickinson1) (Figure 1 (http://amkon.net/l%20pone-0001780-g001)) These rock islands contain numerous caves and rock shelters, and many of these sites contain abundant fossilized or subfossilized human remains. At least ten burial caves have been discovered in the rock islands, and excavations at one of them (Chelechol ra Orrak) has produced the skeletal remains of at least 25 individuals [6] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Fitzpatrick1), [7] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Nelson1) The remains discussed here were recovered from two such sites (Ucheliungs and Omedokel caves), which appear to have served exclusively as burial sites for the early inhabitants of the islands (absence of cultural remains and living debris indicates that these caves were not habitation sites).


The timing of the first human colonization of Palau is unclear. The majority of reliable radiocarbon dates from archaeological sites suggest a first occupation around 3000 cal years ago or slightly earlier, although less reliable dates have indicated a first occupation potentially as early as 4000 cal years ago [6] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Fitzpatrick1)–[9] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Clark1). Subsidence of the rock islands since mid-Holocene times, however, may have resulted in a situation in which the earliest coastal habitation sites now lie below sea level


The question may be asked if the human remains from Palau represent a case of insular dwarfing in a population of H. sapiens, or if – as with the inferred situation on Flores Island [14] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Brown1), [15] (http://amkon.net/l%20pone.0001780-Morwood1)– they may represent a separate species of small-bodied humans.


www.britannica.com (Article) (http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/29974312/Examining-Prehistoric-Migration-Patterns-in-the-Palauan-Archipelago-A-Computer-Simulated-Analysis-of-Drift-Voyaging)

Archaeologists working in the Pacific have long been concerned with how islands in Remote Oceania were colonized prehistorically. To determine patterns of oceanic human dispersal to these islands, researchers have typically relied upon the distribution of stylistically or geochemically unique artifacts (e.g., Descantes et al. 2001; Dickinson and Shutler 2000; Irwin 1978; Pavlish et al. 1986; Weisler 1990, 1998; White 1996; see also Rolett 2002; Rolett et al. 2002), while linguistics and genetic studies have also played an important role in establishing where settlers may have originated (e.g., Bellwood 1997; Blust 2000; Lum 1998; Lum and Cann 2000; Reid 1998; Starosta 1995). One useful means for investigating voyaging and prehistoric colonization patterns is the recording of traditional seafaring techniques and the experimental construction and use of watercraft based on ancient technologies (see Bechol 1972; Doran 1978; Finney 1988; Lewis 1978; Ling 1970; also Bednarik 1998; Irwin 1998). To complement these studies, computer simulations of seafaring have provided additional data about how peoples may have traveled over time through the Pacific (Avis et al. 2007; Irwin 1992; Levison et al. 1973). However, these and other simulations are not explicitly interested in, nor can they hope to provide great insight, into the timing of human arrival, which must be ascertained instead through careful consideration of radiocarbon chronologies from stratified archaeological and paleoenvironmental deposits. Nonetheless, these experiments can help to refine theories on prehistoric migration routes and direct future research objectives to areas that may be understudied. Archaeologists have postulated that human populations in the Palauan archipelago (see Fig. 1), may have migrated from Taiwan, Indonesia, New Guinea (http://amkon.net/EBchecked/topic/411548/New-Guinea), or the Philippines based on archaeological, historic, linguistic, and genetic studies (see Bellwood 1997; Irwin 1992; Reid 1998; Semper 1982 [1873] : 17-18).


using a strategy of drift voyages rather than purposeful voyages is preferable because it is best to make the fewest assumptions possible in the analysis. In all of the simulations it was assumed that the crew was lost at sea. Dening (1963 : 138-153) notes that the limited empirical evidence of known drift voyages in Polynesia suggests a common pattern of behavior in which sailors conclude they are lost early in the voyage and respond by allowing the vessel to drift before the wind with no further attempt to navigate in a particular direction. This strategy allows close to the maximum distance to be covered in a given time when there is no clear indication of relative location. The Palauan archipelago serves as an interesting case study for conducting computer simulated drift voyages because regional currents and winds are known to have high velocity and volatility which also allowed it to remain virtually isolated from direct European contact until 1783 (Callaghan and Fitzpatrick 2007; Hezel 1972, 1983). For the simulations we focused on testing hypothetical routes from Taiwan, the Philippines (Samar and Mindanao), New Guinea, the Bismarcks, Halmahera, and Guam, all of which have been mentioned in the literature as possible origin points for early Palauans, or in the case of the latter two, had some historical connections with Palau. Historical accounts also testify to the frequency of drift voyages from the Carolines to the Philippines (Hezel 1972, 1983). In 1664, Jesuit missionaries recorded some 30 Carolinian canoes that had accidentally drifted to the Philippines with no less than nine dierent landings between 1664 and 1669 (Hezel 1972 : 28). In December 1696, Father Paul Klein, after meeting 30 Carolinians on Samar who had blown o course while sailing from Lamotrek to Fais (Hezel 1972 : 27), described the events in a letter to the Jesuit General in Rome that spurred a keen interest in conducting exploratory voyages into the Western Carolines. We first discuss briefly what is presently known about the prehistoric colonization of Palau. Next we describe the local geographic, oceanographic, and anemological conditions which serve to contextualize how these factors may have affected the passage of watercraft. Based on these and other historic data, we then report on the simulations we conducted of drift voyaging to Palau. Results suggest that the southern Philippines would have been the most likely origin for early Palauan settlers, supporting the most widely accepted hypothesis of colonization.


and Palau sometime in the period 3000-3300 b.p. (Clark 2004, 2005; Fitzpatrick 2002, 2003; Liston 2005). Douglas Osborne (1979) first proposed that the islands were settled in a ``stepping-stone'' fashion northward beginning around 4500 b.p. based on C 14 ages from pottery sherds, an assertion later disputed by Masse (1990) who compiled an additional suite of acceptable radiocarbon dates, none of which was earlier than 2000 b.p. Recent paleoenvironmental studies on all of these island groups (Athens and Ward 2002, 2004; Dodson and Intoh 1999), as well as paleoshoreline evidence in Palau (Dickinson and Athens 2007), however, suggests that colonization may have occurred even earlier around 4000-4500 b.p. Some researchers dispute this proxy evidence without confirmation of associated cultural remains which, although 1000-1500 years earlier than the generally accepted dates from stratified archaeological deposits, seems to be a widespread phenomenon in the region (for discussion of these issues see Athens and Ward 2002, 2004; Welch 1998; Wickler 2001, 2004). Despite the complex settlement pattern that has emerged, involving genetically distinct populations from various regions over time, it now appears likely that prehistoric settlement of the region was relatively contemporaneous, whether one accepts the short (archaeological) or long ( paleoenvironmental) sequence of occupation.


If the remains date back to approximately 2000bc, how long would insular dwarfism take to occur within the population, 1000 years or more? This would push the date of their arrival in Palau back to at least 3000 or more likely to about 4500bc. Not disproportinate with the evidence so far.
Open ocean voyages of at least 500 - 1000 miles would have to have been possible for the migration of these people to the islands.
The ability to travel such large distances across open water would have to have been around even longer for such large groups to survive such journeys.

From the same link as skunks.

www.sciencenews.org (http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/53219/title/Ancient_hominids_may_have_been_seafarers)

"We’re just going to have to accept that, as soon as hominids left Africa, they were long-distance seafarers and rapidly spread all over the place," Strasser says. The traditional view has been that hominids (specifically, H. erectus) left Africa via land routes that ran from the Middle East to Europe and Asia. Other researchers have controversially suggested that H. erectus navigated rafts across short stretches of sea in Indonesia around 800,000 years ago and that Neandertals crossed the Strait of Gibraltar perhaps 60,000 years ago.


www.canada.com (http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/story.html?id=34805893-6a53-46f5-a864-a96d53991051&k=39922)

In a Canadian archeological project that could revolutionize understanding of when and how humans first reached the New World, federal researchers in B.C. have begun probing an underwater site off the Queen Charlotte Islands for traces of a possible prehistoric camp on the shores of an ancient lake long since submerged by the Pacific Ocean.
The landmark investigation, led by Parks Canada scientist Daryl Fedje, is seeking evidence to support a contentious new theory about the peopling of the Americas that is gradually gaining support in scholarly circles. It holds that ancient Asian seafarers, drawn on by food-rich kelp beds ringing the Pacific coasts of present-day Russia, Alaska and British Columbia, began populating this hemisphere thousands of years before the migration of Siberian big-game hunters -- who are known to have travelled across the dried up Bering Strait and down an ice-free corridor east of the Rockies as the last glaciers began retreating about 13,000 years ago.
The earlier maritime migrants are thought to have plied the coastal waters of the North Pacific in sealskin boats, moving in small groups over many generations from their traditional homelands in the Japanese islands or elsewhere along Asia's eastern seaboard.


anthropology.net (The Great Southern Migration Theory: Some Thoughts on Y-hap T and Boating Technology – by Terry Toohill)
(http://anthropology.net/2010/01/29/the-great-southern-migration-theory-some-thoughts-on-y-hap-t-and-boating-technology-by-terry-toohill/)

www.search.com/reference (http://www.search.com/reference/Pre-Columbian_trans-oceanic_contact#Feasibility_of_early_trans-oceanic_travel)

As i've posted previously i think there is ample evidence to suggest Trans Oceanic voyages to The America's and Australia, probably most of the pacific islands, the Azores and the Canaries, Britain and other places by the Phoenicians, possibly mariners from the Levant earlier than the Phoenicians (possibly the Sea Peoples) and even earlier than that from an unknown civilization around 10,000BC or later.

[Hobbit]

Thanks for this Mojo

Interesting, it seems the most logical answer.

Ancient humans had a good feel for the stars, lunar cycles etc which shouldn't come as a great surprise as we evolved from creatures that used observation and the ability to plan and anticipate as a key tools. Migration of animals, strange lands on the horizon must of tweaked their curiosity

The ability to travel on water is evident in nearly all societies and is it not rocket science, even a bunch of 10 years old today can rig up a raft with little to no material.

So how hard would it have been for Og to one day realise that animal skin could be used for a sail or that a canoe twice as big as the one he had dug out would get him to that smudge on the horizon. What follows becomes nearly elementary.