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0 pointsAlotOfReading4y ago0 comments

We know that humans had boats by that point due to their presence in Australia and the current dominance of the coastal migration hypothesis. The problem is that our current understanding of the climate is that the coast was too ice-locked by glaciers for coastal foraging. If there's something this old, either they were doing some very impressive and unexpectedly long distance nautical journeys, or there are gaps in the details of our paleoclimate models.

It's not that either is impossible or even improbable, it's just that it forces us to revisit everything again to try and work out the routes if these (and other similarly early dates that have been proposed in the last couple years) hold up under review.

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irrational4y ago

Coastal foraging? Why can't they just fish? There are lots of fish in those northern reaches today, I assume there would have been even more back then. And fish doesn't necessarily have to be cooked, so no requirement to stop to make fires.

AlotOfReadingOP4y ago

Note that the phrase "coastal foraging" typically implies fishing and the exploitation of other littoral/marine resources.

Anyway, the current understanding of the paleoclimate is that entire region between approximately Valdez and Vancouver Island was entirely covered by glaciers out to the edge of continental shelf until ~18kya. Lesnek et al has some good diagrams [1]. Living exclusively off deep-sea marine resources in an iceberge minefield without fire for over a thousand miles in one of the coldest, most dangerous oceans in the world without landing suggests an unprecedented level of both nautical technology and experience. Where did that come from? We have no good answers right now.

[1] https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aar5040

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tzs4y ago

One point in favor of a water route is you can carry a lot more stuff that way. Most of the migrations into the Americas were before animals other than perhaps dogs were domesticated and before the wheel was invented.

So anything you wanted to bring with you on a land route had to be carried by humans, dogs, or pulled on sleds by humans or dogs.

On a water route you could tow another boat or raft behind full of your stuff. (Rope was invented long before any migration to the Americas).

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