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Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

sciencemag.org

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Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#21

Post by masklinn »

80386 wrote: post #10

I think there's a trend in archaeology of us realizing we've been underestimating the past. The Polynesians were capable of voyaging across the Pacific to South America, and another Austronesian group made it all the way to Madagascar. This was pretty controversial until Kon-Tiki; even now, Polynesian-South American contact isn't fully accepted. (IIRC, we weren't sure how the Polynesians even found so many islands, u…

> Australia had to have been sailed to from somewhere, possibly more than once, possibly intentionally.

The Torres Strait is full of small islands bridging the 150km gap between PNG and Australia. Not only that, but much like the Strait of Dover or the Bering Sea it was most certainly a land bridge until the holocene, and it remains extremely shallow.

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#22

Post by pegasus »

mirimir wrote: post #8
gadders wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe us and them were parallel branches, rather than Homo Sapiens descending from Neanderthals. The Neanderthal genes that people have are from inter-breeding.

Yes, inter-breeding. But that's not "cousins", unless you breed with them. There's no good word for it. But in the sense that an individual has parents, grandparents and so on, the great^N parents of modern Europeans include Neanderthals. No?

No. You're being overly literal, an occupational hazard for us hackers. Human language works differently from computer languages. I suggest working out your right hemisphere - read some poetry, sing some songs etc. Good luck!

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#23

Post by mantas »

misja111 wrote: post #19
mantas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess both. Sometimes tribes having hard times would join better off tribes. Naturally women would be expected to procreate. Taking women during raids was common too. Or if men were killed in warfare, women may have "voluntarily" joined the other tribe. This is common to overall tribe relations. For example, Baltic and Fino-Ugric people in North/east Europe. Baltic people came as part of Indo Europeans while Fino-U…

So when relating your analogy to the article, the Finnish would be the Neandertals?

Yep. Although I don't know if Neanderthal genome is more present in female-specific parts. If it's even in both genders, I guess that'd point towards more voluntarily merge.

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#24

Post by InitialLastName »

saalweachter wrote: post #18
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #4

I wonder what it was like for them to live in a world that was so big and unpopulated and unknown . Someone must have been the first to cross the Bering land bridge into North America, or walk the Nile delta out of Africa into the Levant. Pre-history is deep and wide.

One question I suspect the archaeological evidence is insufficient to answer is how far from the last village/roving band of hunter-gatherers the next band into the wilderness would settle. When you broke off would you stay within a day of your old village or would you walk hundreds, thousands of miles before stopping, completely alone? As far as the mindset goes, I’d say keep in mind that when Europeans landed in th…

1491 by Charles Mann goes into this a bit. Some estimates put the die-off of aboriginal North Americans at 90% from the arrival of Europeans (in ~1500) and the early permanent settlements (Jamestown was in 1607).

The first descriptions of what's now the US east coast from explorers describe coastlines lined with fires as far as the eye could see, and suggested a fairly densely populated continent.

The descriptions from the early settlers (as you've noted) describe a loosely populated land of "savages".

I've always considered the 16th century a time of essentially apocalypse for North America. Imagine what would happen to our society if we had a 90% die-off over 100 years; even in the modern era we would probably find ourselves regressing to "savagery".

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#25

Post by itsameta4 »

mirimir wrote: post #8
gadders wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe us and them were parallel branches, rather than Homo Sapiens descending from Neanderthals. The Neanderthal genes that people have are from inter-breeding.

Yes, inter-breeding. But that's not "cousins", unless you breed with them. There's no good word for it. But in the sense that an individual has parents, grandparents and so on, the great^N parents of modern Europeans include Neanderthals. No?

No, both Neanderthals and humans are generally believed to have each evolved from Homo habilis separately, and then later interbred to varying degrees in various locales.

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#26

Post by toasterlovin »

80386 wrote: post #10

I think there's a trend in archaeology of us realizing we've been underestimating the past. The Polynesians were capable of voyaging across the Pacific to South America, and another Austronesian group made it all the way to Madagascar. This was pretty controversial until Kon-Tiki; even now, Polynesian-South American contact isn't fully accepted. (IIRC, we weren't sure how the Polynesians even found so many islands, u…

FWIW, the area around Southeast Asia and Australia may have been extremely densely populated by hunter gatherers. During the last glacial maximum, sea levels were several hundred feet lower, which created a massive land mass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#27

Post by toasterlovin »

itsameta4 wrote: post #25
mirimir wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, inter-breeding. But that's not "cousins", unless you breed with them. There's no good word for it. But in the sense that an individual has parents, grandparents and so on, the great^N parents of modern Europeans include Neanderthals. No?

No, both Neanderthals and humans are generally believed to have each evolved from Homo habilis separately, and then later interbred to varying degrees in various locales.

Right, the ancestors of Europeans and East Asians include Neanderthals.

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#28

Post by toasterlovin »

mantas wrote: post #23
misja111 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So when relating your analogy to the article, the Finnish would be the Neandertals?

Yep. Although I don't know if Neanderthal genome is more present in female-specific parts. If it's even in both genders, I guess that'd point towards more voluntarily merge.

IIRC, there is no Neanderthal mtDNA (transmitted exclusively from mother to daughter) present in modern humans. That could just be because it died off though.

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#29

Post by 80386 »

chx wrote: post #16
80386 wrote: post #10

I think there's a trend in archaeology of us realizing we've been underestimating the past. The Polynesians were capable of voyaging across the Pacific to South America, and another Austronesian group made it all the way to Madagascar. This was pretty controversial until Kon-Tiki; even now, Polynesian-South American contact isn't fully accepted. (IIRC, we weren't sure how the Polynesians even found so many islands, u…

> The Polynesians were capable of voyaging across the Pacific to South America, and another Austronesian group made it all the way to Madagascar. This was pretty controversial until Kon-Tiki; Too funny: Kon-Tiki went from South America to the Polynesian and it's only more recent research which indicates it might have been the other way around. What we realize now is how little we know.

Fair point - the expedition was intended to prove that the Polynesian migration (or at least the migration to Easter Island) could've come from South America.

Re: Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean

#30

Post by 80386 »

toasterlovin wrote: post #26
80386 wrote: post #10

I think there's a trend in archaeology of us realizing we've been underestimating the past. The Polynesians were capable of voyaging across the Pacific to South America, and another Austronesian group made it all the way to Madagascar. This was pretty controversial until Kon-Tiki; even now, Polynesian-South American contact isn't fully accepted. (IIRC, we weren't sure how the Polynesians even found so many islands, u…

FWIW, the area around Southeast Asia and Australia may have been extremely densely populated by hunter gatherers. During the last glacial maximum, sea levels were several hundred feet lower, which created a massive land mass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundaland

Would there have been a land bridge to Australia?
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