Posted on 03/04/2025 10:25:24 PM PST by SunkenCiv
According to a statement released by Ateneo de Manila University, new research suggests that prehistoric people living in the Philippines and Island Southeast Asia may have had the capability of building sophisticated seafaring boats far earlier than expected. The study challenges the widely held contention that advances in boatbuilding technology during the Paleolithic era only took place in Europe and Africa. The researchers argue that places such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste were never connected to the mainland during this period, yet somehow contain evidence of human occupation. Analysis of 40,000-year-old stone tools excavated at sites across these regions has also yielded traces of plant processing, indicating that human inhabitants were able to extract the plant fibers necessary for making ropes and bindings that were essential in the construction of sturdy boats. The skeletal remains of deep ocean fish including sharks and tuna, as well as fishing implements such as hooks and weights, also indicate that these humans had offshore seafaring skills. Therefore, experts speculate that prehistoric migrations across Island Southeast Asia were not undertaken solely by passive drifters in flimsy bamboo rafts, but by highly skilled navigators in technologically advanced vessels.
(Excerpt) Read more at archaeology.org ...
Were they the first ones to sing “it’s a pirates life for me. Yaho yaho?”
Interesting post sunkenciv
Thanx a lot
Tonno the answer to that. :^)
My pleasure. There’s a bunch of new stuff, wild wide variety, that should make this a gggood week!
The Wreck of The Ella Fitzgerald?
The voyage was going fine until she sang so high that the hull shattered.
Yes, it happened as a result of that broken glass.
Count on it.
Mainstream archeologists continually underestimate early human achievements and their timing. Their are too many sites that were not made by wandering nomads.
That is a fact. Related to and from around the same time frame when early man could only “grunt at each other” to communicate. They had no “written language” do they must have only been able to grunt...
A four-holed piece of ivory provides a glimpse into ancient rope-making:
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ancient-rope-making-tool-ivory
How long did homosapiens exist before they invented writing?
Since those people did not acquire seafaring skill overnight, one wonders just how long were they skilled prior to 38,000 BC?
Modern humans are Homo.sapiens.sapiens which acquired our modern form and brain case 250,000 to 350,000 years ago. Homo.sapiens our total bloodline and our species is 750,000 years to 1.2 million depending on how much brain case development one wants to include in the Homo.s line.
The researchers argue that places such as the Philippines, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste were never connected to the mainland during this period, yet somehow contain evidence of human occupation.
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maybe they should look at geological maps of the period which show they were all connected.
Remember Homo.Neanderthal has documented proof of long distance seafaring in the Mediterranean from well over 100,000 years ago. So modern hominids were ocean mobile well before 38,000 years ago.
Plate tectonics would not have had those islands in touch over a 40,000 year span. Plus the water depths are vastly too deep for even the strongest ice age drop in sea levels to land bridge them together. Thousands of feet water depths vs 400 ish for eustatic sea level chance. The only way humans got there was via long distance deep water crossings.
So for over 200 thousand years our species was smart enough to invent writing but didn’t until the last 5 thousand years or so?
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