New evidence of Homo erectus' sea voyages

Adam Khor

Seems that scientists still get surprised about our prehistoric relatives "not being stupid".

http://archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2011/08/homo-erectus-travelled-high-seas.html?utm_source=feedburner

Galvasean

In before Wibbs creamates himself

Galvasean

Y'know what else is interesting? 'Wibbs was right' is now a multi-topic boards tag! :cool:

steddyeddy

Yep Wibbs will like this. Seriously though very interesting It makes me wonder how advanced erectus was and wheter planning to a large degree was involved in these journeys.

Rubecula

I don't understand why people are surprised by this Intelligence didn't just appear overnight, it evolved like everything else. Just because we have technology built on the past it does not mean the past had nothing to think with.

If they said Erectus had visited the moon I may be a bit surprised, but sea voyage? Naah of course it is possible, Never thought any differently.

Adam Khor

Rubecula wrote: »

I don't understand why people are surprised by this Intelligence didn't just appear overnight, it evolved like everything else. Just because we have technology built on the past it does not mean the past had nothing to think with.

If they said Erectus had visited the moon I may be a bit surprised, but sea voyage? Naah of course it is possible, Never thought any differently.

Agreed 100%.

When a rover finds Homo erectus fossils in the Moon, then I'll be surprised XD

dlofnep

Galvasean wrote: »

In before Wibbs creamates himself

Is Wibbs not a her?

Wibbs

dlofnep wrote:

Is Wibbs not a her?

Nope, a bloke. If people still think this I need to man up my typing

The hobbits of flores would have had to make a sea voyage to make it to the island up to 1 million years ago and would have had to do so in such numbers to maintain a vigorous breeding population that lasted that long. Not a couple of lads clinging to a tree after a tsunami kinda thing.

The age part of the above site puzzles me though. 130,000 years old? That's not Erectus, in Europe that's Neandertal (*EDIT* maybe they were Erectus. Here's a wild one(if those dates are correct)Maybe Neandertals never made it to Crete? That without competition from later humans Erectus survived there as island species for much longer than in mainland Europe? That would be a real story and the one I'd be looking at more) Not unless there was another period before we got here when there were two human species. The tool design looks much more erectus though. Neandertals had handaxes but they're usually more consistently knapped. That said quartzite has different properties to flint/chert which may explain the "primitive" shape.

On that front, note how these boyos adapted their box of tricks to a new environment and raw material. IMHO there are both Erectus and Neandertal tools to be found in Ireland, just not the classic flint based ones as flint is thin on the ground here. Flint tools are the most researched because the earlist and most intensive research in Europe was in areas with flint, so I reckon stuff is being missed. I'd be looking along the south west coast where the ice ages didn't scrape the ground bare.

Adam Khor

Wibbs wrote: »

IMHO there are both Erectus and Neandertal tools to be found in Ireland, just not the classic flint based ones as flint is thin on the ground here. Flint tools are the most researched because the earlist and most intensive research in Europe was in areas with flint, so I reckon stuff is being missed. I'd be looking along the south west coast where the ice ages didn't scrape the ground bare.

I always thought Homo erectus was limited to warm environments? Enlighten me, plz, oh thou hominin expert?

Wibbs

Well they were in the UK 800,000 years ago and in a cooler environment than today so they were pretty adaptable.

rccaulfield

Homo erectus-130'000 years ago-who writes and proof reads these things?

Wibbs

Well to be fair they may well have hung around until more recently http://www.sciencemag.org/content/274/5294/1870.short If Flores man is a dwarf erectus then they defo did at least in on case.

That said reading more of the stuff on the Crete finds they're a bit vague on the dates. From 130,000 years to 700,000 years in one report. If those dates are accurate or they hav a spread of dates like that then it could well be another "flores" with a population of erectus making it to Crete and remaining there for a long time with no competition from other hominids. In another report the have the dates running as young as 45,000 years old to 130,000 with no mention of older. If those dates are right it's really mad. It means erectus/heidelbergensis might have been around in Crete in an isolated population until much more recently, maybe even "escaped" from the new Sapiens. Those dates would kinda match up for that scenario.

They're also a bit vague on the species who made the tools. Either erectus or heidelbergensis. Looking at a better pic of one of them with my amateur eye they look more Mousterian/Neandertal to me? http://www.archaeology.org/1101/topten/crete.html with their flat bases. Erectus stuff tends to have more rounded bases. It does look like an earlier human assemblage though. Not us anyway. The ratio of handaxes to flake tools is very high. A little too high for neandertals too. They made handaxes alright but not nearly as much as previous humans. Then again the raw material itslef may be skewing the ratios? Quartzite aint exactly an ideal material for springing stone blades from.

Basically they need to fix much better dates to those tools/deposits than they currently have.