>>The Strait of Gibraltar is about 8 miles wide. I could see Neolithic people wandering down Spain, seeing land from on top of the Rock of Gibraltar, and deciding to paddle over, then going east across the North African coast.
>>Setting out from Sicily with no idea of whether you would find land before dying, seems a bit ambitious. I could see it happening after it became common knowledge that land was there.
A Gibraltar Dam has been postulated to have existed which would have allowed land migration from Spain to Africa. Theories of another dam from Sicily to Tunisia have also been put forward.
That dam was many millions of years ago.
According to AI which did the research:
The Atlantic Ocean last breached the Strait of Gibraltar and filled the Mediterranean Sea approximately 5.33 million years ago, in an event known as the Zanclean flood. This cataclysmic event marked the end of the Messinian Salinity Crisis, a period during which the Mediterranean basin had partially dried up due to the closure of the Atlantic-Mediterranean gateway.
The flood began as a small trickle when the land bridge at Gibraltar started to subside. Over several thousand years, this trickle grew into a massive torrent as water eroded the channel, eventually reaching an estimated flow rate of up to 100 million cubic meters per second. This enormous influx of water raised the Mediterranean’s level by up to 10 meters per day at its peak.
The refilling of the Mediterranean basin was remarkably rapid:
Up to 90% of the refilling occurred in less than 2 years, possibly even within a few months.
The flood carved a 200-kilometer-long channel through the center of the Strait of Gibraltar.
Global sea levels dropped by 10 meters as the Mediterranean filled up.
This event is considered the most abrupt global-scale environmental shift since the extinction of the dinosaurs. It not only refilled the Mediterranean but also transformed the regional climate and ecology, effectively “rebirthing” the Mediterranean Sea