Neandertals, Stone Age people may have voyaged the Mediterranean • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by poulsbohemian » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 4:23 PM UTC

lkrubner wrote: post #35

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…

A big problem is that so much of human history is now under water. The Mediterranean was likely an extremely fertile region in which to hunt, and likely the largest Neanderthal settlements that ever existed were there. Sadly, they are now under water. Likewise, much of the land between Africa and Saudi Arabia is now under water, though if we could explore it we would learn a lot about how humans migrated out of Afric…

Bigger than Doggerland? I'm not really questioning you, so much as you've shared something about the Mediterranean in relation to the Neanderthal presence that I was unaware and I would be very interested in a source so that I could learn more.

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

#42

Post by samfriedman » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 4:38 PM UTC

amorphid wrote: post #6

nukeop wrote: post #5

Neanderthals had advanced jewelry drills, could make their own clay dishes, could treat diseases with herbs and simple surgeries, and they even had some knowledge of dentistry. They were able to construct furnaces, had advanced (at the time) weapons, social structures, and created underground settlements and tunnels spanning hundreds of kilometers. The popculture image of grunting, snorting primitive cavemen is more…

>> tunnels spanning hundreds of kilometers Do you mean tunnels that are hundreds of kilometers long? Sounds interesting. Can you point us to some reading on that?

It might be more accurate to say that they used tunnels spanning that distance in total: cave systems.

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

#43

Post by gerbilly » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 5:12 PM UTC

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…

Kontiki didn't prove much about the Polynesian navigation or the types of crafts they used.

Linguistic and other evidence strongly suggests that the Polynesian islands were settled from west to east (probably originating from Taiwan) and Kontiki drifted with the currents from east to west.

What's interesting is that the Polynesians settled the outlying islands by sailing into the prevailing winds (making it easier to return home if the failed to find land).

They used efficient outrigger canoes which could be tacked or, sometimes even better, shunted, into the wind.

They also did a lot more than follow birds, they relied on keen observation of the ocean (interference patterns in the swells caused by an unseen island), the colour of the clouds (clouds are darker underneath when there is land beneath them) and relied on a sophisticated 'star compass' for latitude navigation.

If their home island was at latitude -18deg for example, they knew which zenith stars passed above their island, and which stars set at what point on the horizon at that latitude.

So after an eastward exploration run, when they wanted to find their way home, they just kept their islands's zenith star at the zenith and sailed west with the wind till they made landfall.

Polynesian non-instrument navigation is undergoing a revival. See:

http://www.hokulea.com/

http://archive.hokulea.com/holokai/1976/ben_finney.html

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

#44

Post by jcranmer » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 5:23 PM UTC

80386 wrote: post #30

toasterlovin wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There is a tectonic plate boundary in Indonesia such that the ocean depth between Asia and Australia is several km below sea level. In fact, the evidence of sharp biogeographical divide between Asia and Australia (Wallace Line) helped establish support for the idea of plate tectonics.

During the minimal sea level, the peninsula of Asia included Sumatra, Borneo, and Java, while Australia included New Guinea, and the sea almost to (but not connected to) Timor. The minor islands of Indonesia (and Sulawesi) remained disconnected from either continent. The resulting gaps, however, would have been smaller: you could have crossed the straits without losing sight of land.

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

#45

Post by thaumasiotes » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 7:13 PM UTC

gpdpocketer wrote: post #34

80386 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about Australia and Tasmania? The indigenous languages on each side of the Bass Strait have at least one feature in common (initial Cr- clusters) that's rare elsewhere in Australia. (There might be more, but information is pretty hard to come by, and the Tasmanian languages are sparsely attested.) That may or may not be indicative of continued contact; it might even be a coincidence, but if it's not, I wouldn't e…

Given that the indigenous Australian languages hold the record for the longest-running oral traditions (70,000 years worth of story-telling), it would be no surprise to me to hear that there was such an influence...

> Given that the indigenous Australian languages hold the record for the longest-running oral traditions (70,000 years worth of story-telling)

It isn't possible to verify a claim like this (and therefore, it also isn't possible to honestly make a claim like this...) - there are plenty of traditions that claim to draw on 70,000 years of history, but no reason to believe that they actually do.

Some versions of the Sumerian king list document that a single king reigned for 36,000 years.

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

#46

Post by InitialLastName » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 8:27 PM UTC

saalweachter wrote: post #31

InitialLastName wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

Oh, I'm not talking about the "loosely populated" part. I'm referring to the way that they by and large didn't really consider the inhabitants to be "people". Into the 20th century they were largely denied agency by the colonists, and in the 21st century we still displace Native Americans with roughly the same sort of discussion we have about disturbing turtle populations. I don't think 16th century Europeans conside…

If you look at it, that kind of humanism (where the distinction between "humans" and "not humans" is more important than the distinction between, say, "Christians" and "not Christians" wasn't in vogue in the 16th century. 16th century Europeans sent enormous numbers of missionaries to the Americas with the aim of converting the natives; they wouldn't have done that if orangutans were the prevailing primate on the continent.

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

#47

Post by vram22 » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 9:20 PM UTC

gerbilly wrote: post #43

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…

Kontiki didn't prove much about the Polynesian navigation or the types of crafts they used. Linguistic and other evidence strongly suggests that the Polynesian islands were settled from west to east (probably originating from Taiwan) and Kontiki drifted with the currents from east to west. What's interesting is that the Polynesians settled the outlying islands by sailing into the prevailing winds (making it easier to…

>They also did a lot more than follow birds, they relied on keen observation of the ocean (interference patterns in the swells caused by an unseen island), the colour of the clouds (clouds are darker underneath when there is land beneath them) and relied on a sophisticated 'star compass' for latitude navigation.

Yes, the National Geographic article / series I mentioned nearby in this thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16922701

says those sorts of things. So does the Morris West book, IIRC (some of them). In fact, some of the photos in the NG article show a device that may be the same as the "star compass" you mention.

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

#48

Post by mirimir » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 9:45 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #36

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?

> But that's not "cousins", unless you breed with them. What? Cousins are descendants of a recent common ancestor (grandparent for the colloquial first/full cousin), you can breed with them but not doing so doesn't make them non-cousins. > 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? Yes? But tha…

Neanderthals and Homo sapiens sapiens (~50 kiloyears ago) were cousins, both descended from Homo habilis. But modern European Homo sapiens sapiens are descendents of both. So Neanderthals are not their cousins, but rather grand^N parents.

That is, it all turns on who "our" refers to. In the article, "our" clearly refers to you and me and other humans who lived during the past few thousand years. So the article should say that Neanderthals were "their" cousins, referring to Homo sapiens sapiens living ~50 kiloyears ago.

There really should be new species names. I mean, if you're going to distinguish Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, shouldn't you also distinguish hybrids? As we do for mules, "E. asinus × E. caballus". But damn, that would distinguish those modern humans without Neanderthal ancestry, which probably wouldn't be a good thing.

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

#49

Post by mirimir » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

pegasus wrote: post #22

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. 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!

This is an article in Science. Science is literal.

I'm as much a scientist as a hacker. And my right hemisphere is just fine :)

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

#50

Post by mirimir » Wed, Apr 25, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

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.

When people breed, any children call them their parents.