This still leaves the question of how H. erectus reached Flores, which was never connected to mainland Southeast Asia. The paper describing the new fossils proposes they got there "Probably unintentionally (ie through accidental 'rafting', perhaps on tsunami debris)." Van den Bergh notes tsunamis are common in the highly volcanic Indonesian islands and points to examples of people surviving at sea for a long time while clinging to branches afterwards.
Landlubber nonsense. They got there with watercraft.
I totally agree. In a sparsely populated world with no real roads boats are how everything was moved.
Agreed-any early hominid with the mental capacity to wonder if there is a source of food across the water from them is capable of building a raft/boat to get there and check it out...
How did H. erectus reach Flores 700k to 1 million years ago? In the last million years the earth has had 7 or 8 glacial cycles with sea levels changing by as much as 400 feet. So the question regarding travel includes how close were the larger land masses to Flores during the periods when the sea level was 400 years lower than it is today?
Regarding crossing the Mediterranean at Gibralter I have another question. How many times when the sea level fell too low to enter through the Gibralter area did parts of the Mediterranean dry up as a salt flat? How many times and in how many places could Homos have walked across from Africa to Europe in those times? When and where was the most recent period when land transport from Africa to Europe or reverse possible?