The Discovery that Revealed Ancient Humans Navigated the Seas 130,000 Years Ago [2013]

Ancient Origins ^ | 25 October 2013 | John Black

[Fractal Trader]

It was a few years ago that a Greek-American archaeological team made a startling discovery – they found the oldest indications of seafaring and navigation in the world, in an area called Plakia on Crete Island in Greece. It is an incredibly important discovery that is given little attention, despite the fact that it reached the top ten discoveries of 2010. Their research is forcing scholars to rethink the maritime capabilities of early human and pre-human cultures.

The team of archaeologists were carrying out excavations in a gorge on the island of Crete when they discovered a Palaeolithic site in the canyon of Preveli, where more than 30 hand axes and hundreds of other stone tools, such as cleavers and scrapers, made from quartz were found scattered across more than 20 different locations. Until this discovery, it was believed that ancient humans reached Crete, Cyprus, a few other Greek islands, and possibly Sardinia, no earlier than 12,000 years ago. However, remarkably, the stone tools found at Parkia were dated to at least 130,000 years old.

The tools were dated through stratigraphic analysis, a branch of geology which studies rock layers. The cliffs and caves above the shore were uplifted in the ancient past by tectonic forces. The exposed uplifted layers represent the sequence of geologic periods that have been well studied and dated. The team analyzed the layer bearing the tools and determined that the soil had been on the surface 130,000 to 190,000 years ago.

Rocky bluffs around the village of Plakia were actually the shoreline zone in prehistoric times. This is where the team began excavations. Image source . Considering Crete has been an island for five million years, the tools could have only arrived in that location if ancient humans or pre-human species travelled there by boat.

[Sawdring]

Are you kidding? Your posts are one of the reasons I stick around here. I didn't know the exact date you quit posting but I knew you had quit. I think I even tried to look you up on another forum but the forum was lackluster if I remember right.

I enjoy these little time machine posts you ping everyone to. I like to see if the poster is still posting, quit posting or got banned. Anyhow, keep up the good work!

[Sawdring]

Human remains 800K years old have been found on Crete?

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[SunkenCiv]

Flores Island (home of the "hobbits") has 800K old stone tools, and during that interval and then some, the island has not been connected to the mainland.

• Controversial footprint discovery suggests human-like creatures may have roamed Crete [2017]

  The sediments that contain the footprints suggest they probably date to the period immediately before this, at about 5.7m years.

[ApplegateRanch]

Never said they walked. Said perhaps 'island hopped' when water was lower, so distances were shorter, but still navigating, not walking or swimming. .

[SunkenCiv]

It's too bad vessels had to have been made of pretty perishable materials.

[Sawdring]

Here is one about river navigation: https://curiosmos.com/striking-discovery-3-ancient-roman-shipwrecks-found-buried-in-siberia/

[Sawdring]

I’ll let you find the misprint.

[SunkenCiv]

That would have been quite a discovery! :^)

[17th Miss Regt]

Why is this so hard to believe? After all, black Egyptians were taking regular commuter trips between Thebes and the upper Nile area on airplanes that used wind power about five thousand years ago! (I saw this in The Final Call.)