31–40 of 41 posts
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".
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.
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Ye no proofs at all. The feasibility depends a lot on what they mean with "sailing". I guess their use includes "rowing" and "drifting".
they find human-made tools (which they can assign dates to) on islands distant from shore. Their only explanation that they are hypothesizing is that humans traveled there across water. Do you have a better idea? They're not saying they found boats, they're saying there is clear evidence of human travel. Focus on the evidence there is, not evidence you would like to see. What do you hypothesize that fits the evidence…
That the tools were moved to Crete way later than when they were made. Obviously, there are no proof of that either. I am not saying it is impossible Neaderthals got there by boat-ish means. But recycling seems like a possibility not moving back seatravel too far into the past.
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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…
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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
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I thought there was some decent evidence including butcher marks on bones and widespread genetic immunity to human specific prions
That's evidence that the Neanderthals engaged in cannibalism. That's not evidence that homo sapiens ate the Neanderthals as food.
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That's evidence that the Neanderthals engaged in cannibalism. That's not evidence that homo sapiens ate the Neanderthals as food.
I think the genetic evidence is adaptive mutations that are present in all humans
That isn't evidence that we killed the Neanderthals for food. Rather than, say, having added some ecosystem stress through competition that left them less able to handle a major volcano 40,000 years ago.
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I think the genetic evidence is adaptive mutations that are present in all humans
Our species also engaged in cannibalism. That isn't evidence that we killed the Neanderthals for food. Rather than, say, having added some ecosystem stress through competition that left them less able to handle a major volcano 40,000 years ago.
> 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.