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Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

thearchaeologist.org

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Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#21

Post by AlotOfReading »

bee_rider wrote: post #16
Maursault wrote: post #11

> Long before modern humans existed, 100,000 years ago 100,000ya ago is not "long before modern humans existed." Modern humans are Homo sapiens, and the oldest known Homo sapiens remains (to date, that we know of) are dated to 300,000 years ago, which is now apparently 200,000 years before "long before" Homo sapiens existed. I guess the good news is we invent the time machine before too long.

I remember when I was a kid, textbooks would draw a distinction between “homo sapiens” and “homo sapiens sapiens.” But it is odd, when I search “homo sapiens sapiens,” I only see links to like, homework helper/yahoo question sites referencing it. Wikipedia and the Smithsonian seem to have dropped the second sapiens. Is this an update to how this stuff is understood? I vaguely think the extra sapiens was added on to d…

This was an artifact from a long-running debate about how we should organize the taxonomy of genus Homo. On one hand, people made good arguments that archaic hominins like Neanderthals were distinct enough to consider them separate species. On the other, there were reasonable arguments that they were closely related enough that archaic and modern hominins were a single species with a number of distinct subspecies. Modern humans would be called H. sapiens sapiens in the latter scheme.

This debate was mostly ended in favor of the separate species perspective by the early 2000s, but not everyone was reconciled and archaeogenetics forced us to rewrite the human taxonomy anyway. People will understand what you mean if you continue using H. sapiens sapiens, it's when you use "H. sapiens" to include Neanderthals and Denisovans that people will be confused. Sometimes that terminology is also also used it to exclude transitional subspecies like idaltu, which I think is why wiki uses it.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#22

Post by themgt »

bee_rider wrote: post #16
Maursault wrote: post #11

> Long before modern humans existed, 100,000 years ago 100,000ya ago is not "long before modern humans existed." Modern humans are Homo sapiens, and the oldest known Homo sapiens remains (to date, that we know of) are dated to 300,000 years ago, which is now apparently 200,000 years before "long before" Homo sapiens existed. I guess the good news is we invent the time machine before too long.

I remember when I was a kid, textbooks would draw a distinction between “homo sapiens” and “homo sapiens sapiens.” But it is odd, when I search “homo sapiens sapiens,” I only see links to like, homework helper/yahoo question sites referencing it. Wikipedia and the Smithsonian seem to have dropped the second sapiens. Is this an update to how this stuff is understood? I vaguely think the extra sapiens was added on to d…

imo the correct answer is this stuff is incredibly complicated and in incredible flux due to revolutionary advances in genetic research on our prehistoric ancestors and present day people. There's a lot of different perspectives but anyone with some humility would admit a new finding could be announced tomorrow that would upend quite a lot of what we think we know. Already e.g. Naledi, Denisovans, Floresiensis, Longi, Oase, etc are pretty mind-blowing to the consensus views 20 years ago. I would pay less attention to the labels used and more on the broader research.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#23

Post by Maursault »

erisinger wrote: post #17
Maursault wrote: post #11

> Long before modern humans existed, 100,000 years ago 100,000ya ago is not "long before modern humans existed." Modern humans are Homo sapiens, and the oldest known Homo sapiens remains (to date, that we know of) are dated to 300,000 years ago, which is now apparently 200,000 years before "long before" Homo sapiens existed. I guess the good news is we invent the time machine before too long.

Came here to see if anyone else had a problem with that timeline.

What's so hard to believe is humans once roamed the Earth.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#24

Post by AlotOfReading »

bigtones wrote: post #7

The referenced paper on this was published more than a decade ago (2012): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03054...

Which is weird, because the same authors published a more notable paper on exactly this subject very recently in Quaternary [0]. I don't think the argument is unreasonable, but the author of this article is terribly misinformed about many things. For example, the cyclades would have been visible from the mainland, as they still are today! [1] is the view from the western mainland, [2] is the view from the eastern side, today the island of Ikaria. Notice that Crete is also visible from both the Cyclades and the mainland under ideal conditions.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2022.09.001

[1] https://www.peakfinder.org/?lat=37.98035&lng=24.52317&ele=25...

[2] https://www.peakfinder.org/?lat=37.53781&lng=26.01118&ele=87...

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#25

Post by mlhpdx »

koheripbal wrote: post #12
greatpostman wrote: post #6

This idea that we were only sophisticated for the last few thousand years is laughable

The correctness of this comment wildly depends on the reader's interpretation of the word "sophisticated".

It is laughable to think that the first supported travel over water was done in “boats“ or by “sailing“. Children instinctively climb onto floating objects. It seems very likely to be that some unwary homo-something crossed an unswimmable span of water quite by accident and survived. Perhaps some other individual observed their fate and followed, perhaps from the same species or perhaps not. Perhaps alone, or perhaps with others.

The evidence is merely that there are early tools on islands.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#26

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

Maursault wrote: post #11

> Long before modern humans existed, 100,000 years ago 100,000ya ago is not "long before modern humans existed." Modern humans are Homo sapiens, and the oldest known Homo sapiens remains (to date, that we know of) are dated to 300,000 years ago, which is now apparently 200,000 years before "long before" Homo sapiens existed. I guess the good news is we invent the time machine before too long.

There's a distinction between biologically modern and behaviorally modern humans. Biologically modern humans have been dated to at least as early as 300k years ago. However behavioral modernity, is more recent. There's debate about how exactly to define things and draw a line, but it's generally around 70k years ago.

The article isn't particularly well written but that's probably what they're referring to.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#27

Post by Finnucane »

rightbyte wrote: post #5
robertlagrant wrote: post #2

It's an interesting theory, but as often is the case, the title is far more definite than the content.

Ye no proofs at all. The feasibility depends a lot on what they mean with "sailing". I guess their use includes "rowing" and "drifting".

It suggests some sort of navigable floaty thing. They saw an island offshore, thought, let's go there, and figured out a way to do it.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#28

Post by s1artibartfast »

btilly wrote: post #10
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #8

I think it’s important to note that this is just showing that Neanderthal were sailing long before modern human remains of sailing were dated to - lll Modern humans and Neanderthals (and Denisovians) coexist for about 100-150k years before modern humans basically killed them all after interbreeding.

Interspecies violence is one of a ton of proposed theories, and not a lot of evidence exists to suggest favoring one over the other. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neanderthal_extinction for some of the other theories.

I thought there was some decent evidence including butcher marks on bones and widespread genetic immunity to human specific prions

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#29

Post by eastof »

rightbyte wrote: post #3

Also seems possible that the tools might have been moved, at a later date? I imagine a stone age person digging through some Neanderthal settlement remains, would loot any tools.

Except those "stone age" people came around 50,000 years later. Not only is it unlikely they would find any evidence of the Neanderthals, but they would already have more sophisticated tools by then, don't think those (even in their time) by then ancient tools would be worth looting.

Re: Evidence that the Neanderthals were the first seafarers?

#30

Post by shkkmo »

karaterobot wrote: post #15

> Unfortunately, archaeologists are unable to provide additional evidence because any boats used by Neanderthals would have been made of wood, which would have long since decomposed to nothing. Why make the leap to assume they invented sails, given the lack of physical evidence? I mean, it seems reasonable to think they could have rowed or even floated 40km long before they developed sails, and that they would develo…

You and others seem to be hung up on the fact that the verb "sail" can mean any travel on water by ship, regardless of how that ship is propelled.
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