Sail on

"Ancient Mariners: Did Neanderthals Sail to Mediterranean?"
Yahoo News 11/17/12

“For instance, stone artifacts on the southern Ionian Islands hint at human sites there as early as 110,000 years ago. Investigators have also recovered quartz hand-axs, three-sided picks and stone cleavers from Crete that may date back about 170,000 years ago. The distance of Crete about 100 miles (160 kilometers) from the mainland would have made such a sea voyage no small feat.

“The exceedingly old age of these artifacts suggests the seafarers who made them might not even been modern humans, who originated between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago. Instead, they might have been Neanderthals or perhaps even Homo erectus.”

I’m throwing this in as a reminder of my hypothesis—of which you need no reminder—that we descended from the trees to the water’s edge some millions of years ago, where we still live. I regularly toss in the most recent archeological finds, which—surprise, surprise—never contradict that theory; au contraire, they always line up in support. As if they had a choice.

Needless-to-say, living by the water doesn’t mean making boats, but it sure makes making them easier. I would imagine that rafts came shortly after the knot. I would suspect that they came into being long before modern humans. Evidence from Flores and Australia support the findings from Crete, that people were mariners prior to modern humans.

I’m just saying…