Ocean's History Being Unlocked By Researchers

Red Orbit ^ | Monday, May 25, 2009 | redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

[SunkenCiv]

According to a recent study, medieval fishermen first took to the sea around AD 1,000 in search of food after a sharp decline in freshwater fish. The decline was likely caused by rising population and pollution levels... Piecing the information together required looking at fish bones to determine their species, and what time period they came from. One hypothesis says that freshwater fish were no longer able to satisfy demand. "At the end of the first millennium AD there is this wholesale shift in emphasis from reliance on freshwater fish towards marine species," said Barrett. "It is not rocket science, it is just literally looking at the proportion of species that are obligatory freshwater ones, such as pike... and which ones are obligatory sea fish, such as cod and herring." According to Barrett, the cause of the shift can not be pinpointed to one single item... "Certainly, one of the straightforward hypotheses is that freshwater fish were no longer sufficient to satisfy demand. This was likely to have been for two reasons; one was because there had been a reduction in the availability of freshwater fish as a result of overfishing, or from things such as people building dams for water mills. The second thing would have been that there would have simply been more people."

[SunkenCiv]

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian M. Fagan Paperback

[SunkenCiv]

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[Winstons Julia]

I’ll bet they find a fossil that proves we are descended from fish. A little tiny guppy with opposable little thumbs.

[SunkenCiv]

Viewpoint: Ghosts of oceans past and future by Ian Poiner and Poul Holm

[jeffc]

Gee, why couldn’t it have been because people found sea fish tasty?

[muawiyah]

Some time about 900 AD the Viking people met the Sa'ami.

The Sa'ami had several useful inventions that made them popular with the Vikings. First, there was this powdered reindeer urine high in the alkaloids found in Amanita Muscaria.

Then there were skis, and Norwegian rat trap bindings for those skis, as well as improved snowshoes.

Best of all the Sa'ami had come up with a boathull design for use in the Northern rivers and the nearshore Arctic Ocean.

That design, scaled up, could ply North Atlantic and Baltic seas with ease.

I suspect that it was the availability of a dramatically superior boat design that stimulated European fishermen (Takala) to take to the ocean to catch fish.

[JoeProBono]

[centurion316]

I suspect that this report is nonsense. Man has been catching all manner of fish, shellfish, and other foods from the sea for tens, thousands, and probably hundreds of thousands of years. Some have opined that homo sapiens lack of body hair was an adaptation from diving for seafood in coastal waters. That would place the behavior at millions of years BP. Certainly Mediterranean cultures have had ship and fishing technologies for many thousands of years before 1000 AD.

This sounds like a conclusion in search of evidence. I think that some other explanation is in order.

[FastCoyote]

Or maybe the boys just wanted to go fishing away from their wives.

[jimtorr]

I think the main problem here is a poorly written book, report, or article.

While medieval fishermen may have begun doing more sea fishing, they did not suddenly begin fishing at sea around 1000 AD.

[spyone]

Agreed. As do many above posters. Have to get up pretty early in the morning to get one by the Freeper peer review, I must say.

[blam]

"While medieval fishermen may have begun doing more sea fishing, they did not suddenly begin fishing at sea around 1000 AD."

I agree. There's something fishy about this article.

[ckilmer]

In recent years, Ports on the red sea have been found that brought indian spices to rome. Piers dating to dating to a couple centuries before christ have been found on the southern coast of england.

I go for the theory that coastal sailing has been around for 10’s of thousands of years. I don’t know if people fished when they were on the open ocean.

[I Buried My Guns]

"...Some time about 900 AD the Viking people met the Sa'ami....

You have piqued my interest! Now I am compelled to learn every thing I can about the concept you laid out.

[muawiyah]

Meditdrranean cultures unfortunately had ships that were well adapted to the Mediterranean, but not the North Atlantic where the great schools of cod could be found.

The Vikings were pretty well locked up on the Baltic until an improved hull design came along. That designed had been worked out by the Sa'ami (laplanders) over thousands of years on the rugged waters of rivers that run to the Arctic ocean.

The Sa'ami and the Vikings "met" on a regular basis sometime around the 9th or 10th centuries. The Vikings then discovered the type of hull that could handle nasty seas typical of the North Atlantic.

They scaled the design up to the boat typical of Viking raiders.

NOTE: The Sa'ami had clearly occupied all of Scandinavia for about 6,000 years, but pulled back North about 2000 years ago with the arrival of the Indo- Europeans.

The Sa'ami are a genetic isolate of the original European people who occupied the Western refugia during the periods of heavy glaciation up until about 14,000 years ago. Consequently they are genetically different from the people to the South, and are, to say the least, "cold adapted". What that means is rather complex, and is not true of all the Sa'ami tribes, each of which speaks a different language. It can include ability to digest and use high iron content food, ability to survive immersion in 32 degree water for hours, not just minutes, anamalous dichromatism, etc. Most of these differences are undetectible in normal conditions. Many Sa'ami have what are described as "Oriental eyes" ~ but they're not. Rather, many Sa'ami have eyes more like those of their (and your) Cro-Magnon ancestors than do the heavily mutated Indo-Europeans.

[SunkenCiv]

:’) Tasty and plentiful and cheap, and outside political jurisdictions.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks!

[jeffc]

:’) Tasty and plentiful and cheap, and outside political jurisdictions.

Finally! Somebody noticed my post! Thanks, Civ! I found it funny that some "professional" was trying to explain why human started to fish the seas and posited a bunch of reasons, politically and otherwise, but never really thought that maybe the fish just plain tasted good and were easy to get!

So much for an advanced education!

[SunkenCiv]

:’)