Migrating to Prehistoric Australia: Part Two

The first human inhabitants of the island continent of Australia arrived perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years – just 10,000 years after some nomadic band(s) kissed their African homeland good day. Since there is, and never has been in human prehistory, a land bridge between the two geographical continents, the first Australians had to have mastered the ‘art’ of sailing. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to back up what must be the obvious.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Fast-forward tens of thousands of years later.

Aborigines in the northeast of Australia, starting roughly 2500 years ago, had contact with Melanesian seafarers, the Torres Strait Islanders, who could island and reef-hop over the newly created Torres Strait. Post Ice Age sea level rise created that 150 km Torres Strait marine barrier by flooding that former land connection that separated Australia from New Guinea. However, Melanesian seafaring technology apparently wasn’t readily adopted by the Aborigines. In any event, it doesn’t assist in explaining the arrival(s) – one or more waves – of Aborigines that many tens of thousands of years ago.

Prior to white settlement, less than three centuries ago, there is no archaeological or pictorial evidence for sophisticated Aboriginal maritime activities in Australia. Dugout canoes is about as sophisticated as you get, technology which apparently came via Makassan traders from Sulawesi (an Indonesian island), and then only since the early 18^th Century, or shortly prior to white settlement. That’s not much help is getting Aborigines to Australia 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.

All up, it was non-Australian seafarers who discovered the Aborigines (the Dutch in 1606, the English in 1688, all culminating with Captain Cook’s visit in 1770, hence white settlement in 1788) and never the other way around.

So, if there is one thing one doesn’t associate with the Australian Aborigine, its seafaring and ocean navigation abilities. Aborigines are nomadic landlubbers with at best bark canoes. Aborigines go walkabout, not sailabout. If the Aborigines really had halfway decent maritime abilities, you’d of thought they would have discovered and colonized Lord Howe Island or Norfolk Island, even New Zealand several tens of thousands of years ago. [Tasmania doesn’t count since that island was connected to the Australian mainland during the drop in sea levels during the Ice Ages.] But New Zealand only dates human inhabitation back to just roughly 1300 AD or CE if you like, and the Maoris aren’t the Australian Aborigines.

It’s a similar mystery as the one as to why the ancient prehistoric east African Homo sapiens or Homo erectus didn’t discover that rather large island target off their own eastern coast – Madagascar. Madagascar wasn’t inhabited until roughly between 350 BCE and 550 CE, and then from Borneo. Native Africans (the Bantu) didn’t hit town until 1000 CE. The evidence suggests to me that prehistoric nomadic hunter-gatherers just didn’t have the seamanship skills everyone assumes they must have had.

So, the $64,000 question is, how did they, the Aborigines, arrive in Australia? By boat stupid! It’s an axiomatic response that in prehistoric times to get from Point A to Point B, when Point A and Point B are separated by reasonably vast oceanic distances, that our ‘primitive’ ancestors must have constructed rafts or boats and used same to cross said vast oceanic distances. It just has to be, no other explanation is possible. But is it logical? No, IMHO. They, our prehistoric ancestors didn’t have boat or raft building know-how, or navigation skills nor seamanship abilities. Is there actual evidence they did? Again, the answer is in the negative.

The first boats found in the archaeological record only date to about 7000 BCE, the historical era, way, way after they are required in way earlier prehistoric times. That’s probably because ‘modern’ sailing, as in lengthy ocean voyages involving maritime crossings with nothing but the ocean in view, only took off in historical times, post the Agricultural Revolution which dates to roughly 10,000 years ago. That’s now well documented in the archaeological and pictorial record. The main outcomes were establishing trade routes and the opening up of Oceania (Hawaii, Easter Island, New Zealand, Madagascar, etc.) to both initial discovery and colonization. Perhaps that was a logical outcome due to the stability and population growth caused by establishing settlements. Or, perhaps like agriculture itself, maritime skills were a gift from the ‘gods’.

One other bit of evidence that it isn’t easy to reach Australia from S.E. Asia, despite a theory that it would have been relatively easy via island hopping, is that Australia has a very unique fauna. You don’t find the kangaroo, koala, or platypus in S.E. Asia, and you don’t find fauna from S.E. Asia in Australia’s natural environment. Seeds, insects, birds, etc. can cross over of course, carried on the winds or under their own power, but not anything that’s larger and fully terrestrial. 

In conclusion, in prehistoric times, in order to migrate to certain geographical locations, like Australia, it’s traditional to assume, actually stating the bleeding obvious, that primitive humans from that era had to stick their toes in the water and cross on over by building rafts or boats, acquiring various maritime skills and sailing the ocean blue. However, there is no evidence, far less proof for this assertion. Rather, IMHO, you’d be a bloody idiot to stick your toe in the water unless practically forced at ‘gunpoint’. It’s a Catch-22: Before you risk your all sailing the ocean blue, you’d better first have or acquire motive, means and opportunity. But, you can only become comfortable with having motive, means and opportunity after you’ve already risked your all by having first sailed the ocean blue and become skilled professional sailors. Or, in other words, before you’re at all comfortable sticking your toes in the water, you’ve got to stick you toes in the water. Faced with that sort of choice, the sane decision is to keep your toes out of the water from the get-go. That’s also stating the bleeding obvious. When two sides state the bleeding obvious, and both those sides are contradictory, well that’s a Catch-22.

So how did the Australian Aborigine get to Australia, or Sahul? Well, maybe they just flapped their arms and flew, or were flown, but they didn’t swim the distance nor did they sail it. It’s time to think outside of the box.

Further reading:

Flood, Josephine; Archaeology of the Dreamtime: The Story of Prehistoric Australia and Its People; Angus & Robertson, Sydney; Revised Edition, 1995:

Isaacs, Jennifer (Compiler & Editor); Australian Dreaming: 40,000 Years of Aboriginal History;  Lansdowne Press, Sydney; 1980:

Kamminga, Johan & Mulvaney, John; Prehistory of Australia; Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C.; 1999:

Mountford, Charles P. & Roberts, Ainslie; Legends of the Dreamtime; International Limited Editions, Hong Kong; 1975:

Migrating to Prehistoric Australia: Part One

The first human inhabitants of the island continent of Australia arrived perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years – just 10,000 years after some nomadic band(s) kissed their African homeland good day. Since there is, and never has been in human prehistory, a land bridge between the two geographical continents, the first Australians had to have mastered the ‘art’ of sailing. Unfortunately, there’s no evidence to back up what must be the obvious.

What would become the Australian Aborigines* arrived in Australia a minimum of 40,000 years ago, perhaps as long ago as 60,000 years ago. To get to Australia, from mankind’s (as in Homo sapiens) birthplace, eastern Africa, requires getting one’s feet wet. There just is no getting around that fact.

Even at the height of the Ice Ages and lower sea levels, a migration to Australia would still have had to cross considerable ocean distances. There never was a direct land route linking Africa and Australia that hominids could have crossed.

There was however an Ice Age derived land connection between Australia and New Guinea until about 6000 years ago. Collectively this Australia-New Guinea landmass was called Sahul, but the entirety of Sahul was still surrounded by formable distances of ocean from the nearest other land, roughly 90 km distant at the closest point. To get to Sahul, hence Australia, you needed to sail the ocean blue.

We really do have to ask in the first place is whether or not, as a typical prehistory member of our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestry, the Aborigines would have been comfortable with dealing with bodies of water. Rivers and streams you can wade across or swim across, maybe use a buoyant log to hold on to if need be. Or, just keep on wandering upstream until the water obstacle is fordable. Lakes can be walked around. But the ocean!!! The oceans offshore must have been terrifying to our very ancient ancestors, and rightly so. Therefore, perhaps it should not be surprising that, alas, there’s no evidence one can exhibit in a museum that what would become the Aboriginal culture ever had the ability or desire to sail the ocean blue, at least based on what that culture has exhibited over the many, many generations since that presumed maritime crossing(s).

Okay, let’s go back to the beginnings. Once upon a time what would become the nomadic hunter-gatherer race we know today as the Australian Aborigine was just a hop, skip and a ‘short’ sail away from the Promised Land. But first things first; that hop and skip

.

Sooner or later in your nomadic hunter-gatherer wanderings you’re going to intersect the seashore! So let’s say you’re the leader of a small band of nomadic hunter-gatherer ‘aborigines’ somewhere in eastern Indonesia between 40,000 and 60,000 years ago. You climb up and over a hill, and there, much to your astonishment, lays the ocean. You’ve never seen the ocean before, so like wow, Surprise! Now what do you do? Well presumably you head on down to the shoreline to check it out. Then what? Could you honestly credit the following monolog: “Hey gang, look at what we found, it’s the ocean! What say we all build a raft and go sailing!”

Well it might depend on whether or not you can see an opposite shore – land across the ocean, on the horizon that can’t be reached just by walking the coastline around to it. If there is nothing on the horizon except the ocean if you can’t see the opposite shore, there’s probably no way you’re going to stick your toe into the water. In most cases with no other land in sight, you haven’t a clue what’s on the other side of the ocean, if anything (maybe it goes on forever and forever), or how far across it is to the other side. The known is safer than the unknown; discretion is the better part of valour.

But if you can see land across the way, well, decisions, decisions. It all boils down to motive, means and opportunity.

Motive: You might associate that distant across the waters land with food, shelter, security (defence) and mates. No guarantees of course. If where you are lacks in one or more of those categories, you might be tempted to cross on over – or more likely as not just move on up or down the shoreline or back inland. Are you really going to stop, make a raft and go sailing out into the pure unknown out of pure curiosity that there might be food, shelter, security and/or mates there, though curiosity you probably have even if it’s more than just academic curiosity? No, in the daily hunt for survival you’ll probably ignore the ocean and the land on the horizon and just follow the coastline (or go back inland) – which eventually will bring you to most places that also offer food, shelter, security and mates. You’re also not going to have much of a motive if you’re scared witless that in doing so you are entering the realm of the ‘gods’. There’s something rather supernatural about the interface between ocean and land; the tides. The tides must have seemed to be a purely supernatural manifestation, without natural explanation (Isaac Newton was a far distant prospect at the time), an unexplainable action of the ‘gods’ (which were a really real prospect at the time) somehow saying “this is our domain, keep away”.

Means: Even if you’d like to cross on over to that unknown land mass, you’re going to need raw materials; the ability to figure out how to put them together properly; and acquire seafaring and navigation skills. In any event, it’s not all that easy building and sailing and navigating a seaworthy boat or raft from scratch without any handy-dandy how-to manual available. It’s all going to be trial and error. Can you afford the time and risks? Further, you can’t drink the seawater so freshwater would have to be carried on any hypothetical voyage. Do you have leak-proof containers? If so, how much do you need to take? Who knows? You certainly wouldn’t have a clue.

Opportunity: You and your band of nomadic hunter-gatherers have lots of pressing needs, like finding today’s food and water, plus tonight’s shelter. You found the shoreline and found that it was a good resource, unlike that land across the way of which you know nothing. The coastlines and seashores offers an abundance of food stuffs and resources: shellfish, crabs, turtles, seals, seabirds, fish, even seaweed (dried for fuel). Coastlines and seashores are good. Unknown lands have a low priority. But in the unlikely event you have lots of spare time on your hands, well, opportunity beckons – maybe. 

If you forget the land opposite, what about using the coastal waters as a highway up and down the coast and save the legs? Would you travel the coastline by boat or raft? - Probably not. Firstly, you’re a hunter-gatherer. You can’t do that from a raft. Secondly, the ocean, even just offshore, is nothing if not unpredictable and dangerous: from huge waves, gales, riptides, strong currents, razor-sharp rocks and shoals, sharks, jellyfish, hypothermia, and just all sorts of unknowns lurking beneath the surface to add to your terrors. Would you rather be high and dry 10 miles inland or 10 miles out to sea in a raft that’s breaking up and you trying to keep your head above water and not ending up as fish-food? It takes way less effort sit on the beach than to swim or sail in or on the ocean, and it’s a lot safer too! On land, you’re in control; you have control. Even if you skirt the coastline from the ocean instead of the land side, if you come to an impassable barrier, it’s probably easier and far safer to trek inland for a while than divert resources to swimming or rafting around the barrier with all the dangers that could entail.

*There’s actually no such animal as The Australian Aborigine, rather there are some 400 distinct Aboriginal groups throughout Australia. However, one assumes they all collectively had a common ‘ancestral’ origin.

To be continued…

Humanity: The Cosmic Connection

There are various enigmas that cry out for resolution, like the Fermi Paradox regarding ET, “Where is everybody?” Then there are enigmas surrounding human origins, evolution and characteristics, extinctions, migrations and colonizations, and the rise to civilization. Finally, much that’s in our global mythologies is anomalous. In modern times we have UFOs and alien abductions. It’s time to wrap all this up in one neat little package, tied up with a nice little ribbon and bow. 

Let’s start off briefly with the Fermi Paradox. In essence, it suggests that if you accept that there has to be one or more extraterrestrial highly advanced technological civilizations out there in the galaxy, in interstellar space, with interstellar space travelling capabilities, then the odds are as close to 100% as anyone would care to bet, that Planet Earth has been discovered and visited. The time it takes to explore the galaxy, every nook and cranny, even without resorting to Star Trek type faster-than-light velocities, is but a tiny fraction of the age of the galaxy. The Fermi Paradox is only a paradox if one tries to argue that ET has never visited our humble planetary abode. So, let’s solve the Fermi Paradox and accept that once upon a time, ET paid Planet Earth a visit – at least one.

About eight or so million years ago, Planet Earth witnessed the arrival of a rather loose federation of extraterrestrials (ET) with a quasi social/religious/missionary goal of assisting in the development and spread of intelligent civilizations across the galaxy and the cosmos while simultaneously creating intelligent, civilized beings who will worship them as their superiors, even perhaps as gods. Since there were no such intelligent, civilized beings on Planet Earth eight million years ago, ET had to work what Mother Nature provided them.

Now eight million years ago is very recent relative to the age of Planet Earth, and extremely recent relative to the age of our galaxy and the cosmos at large. Therefore, this may not have been an ET first visit, but the one which finally yielded up a promising candidate from which they could manipulate to achieve their goal.

That most suitable candidate species to work with, or on, would have been the chimpanzee or a close ancestor to the chimp, found in Africa. And so ET set up shop and laboratory in Africa to start the long process of assisting Mother Nature in the development (creation or origin)and spread (migration) of another (soon to be engineered) intelligent civilization.

Over the next eight or so million years – no great rush; lots of time on their hands; these are an extremely long-lived ET – ET bioengineered, genetically engineered, or otherwise artificially bred and selected our initial primate stock into over twenty initial primate-to-ultimate-hominid species, each species slightly more advanced in IQ, dexterity, bipedal gait, speech, abstract reasoning ability (something other than just food, sex, danger), etc. than the one before.

For starters, individual groupings of each species in their own time and turn would be released by ET into the Africa’s wild environment to see how they coped, just like we humans will artificially breed up populations of endangered species and release them into the wild and hope for the best. Of those hominid species released into the wild, most didn’t – cope that is. Back to the drawing board and more genetics and breeding and artificial selection and on to the next advancement.

A few hominid species that did adapt reasonable to the outside backyard of Africa proper would then be transported to non-African locations and a wider variety of terrestrial environments. There were more failures, but some initial successes with out-of-Africa environments. Homo erectus just about fit the bill – just about, but it too ultimately went the way of the Dodo.

Finally, about 200,000 years ago, the latest in this twenty-plus long line of primate-to-hominid creations were created on the slab in the ET lab in Africa – Homo sapiens. They proved successful in adapting to the natural African environment. Further experiments with transporting and transplanting groups of them to various environments around the globe (except Antarctica) for the most part yielded positives in the Middle East, the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia, etc. If ET transplanted groups of Homo sapiens to Oceania that was a failure as there are no archaeological sites that verify hominids in Oceania until only relatively recent historical (not prehistorically) times.

Once Homo sapiens became established globally, two things happened. Firstly, individual units of ET headed by a Supreme ET were assigned to oversee the various geographical regions that Homo sapiens had adapted to. For example, ET Yahweh and crew were assigned to the eastern coastline and seaboard region of the Mediterranean. Secondly, these units then assisted these nomadic bands of Homo sapiens in each region in the transition from being wandering hunter-gatherers living by their wits into becoming civilized agricultural-based settlements or rural communities that put down roots - assuming the region in question was suitable to settlements, and not all were, like Australia.   

At this point one might expect “and they all lived happy ever after”. Not so; it was not to be.

It is often said that man was created in God’s image, or in more general parlance, in the image of the gods. If that’s the case, it should come as no surprise that the gods have human traits. Translated, anything humans were (or are) skilled at doing, you can bet the family farm equally that the ‘gods’ were skilled ditto, the good, the bad and the ugly. ET was not above squabbling among themselves over ways and means, and there were power grabs and coups and mutinies afoot, like when Yahweh was nearly toppled by Satan. Collectively, our mythologies lump these ancient ‘star wars’ as Wars in ‘Heaven’.

Humans of course also didn’t live long and prosper either. Like father (the gods), like son (Homo sapiens).

There’s one other mythological anomaly that supports the idea that not only was ET highly advanced in interstellar space travel (well they got here didn’t they), but especially highly skilled in genetic and bioengineering. The genetics experiments of ET were not just confined to building a better hominid species, but creating all sorts of genetically engineered ‘monsters’. If there is one universal above nearly all other universals in the mythologies of primitive ‘man’ it’s the reality of hybrids, both animal-animal hybrids (i.e. – Pegasus in Greek Mythology) and animal-human hybrids (i.e. – the Birdmen of Easter Island). 

Whether misinterpreted by primitive humans, or deliberately misled, ET became the ‘gods’ and interactions between the two became the basis of our global mythologies, which is to a greater or lesser extent really a collection of religiously-themed mythologies since primitive ‘man’ thought ‘he’ was dealing with supernatural deities. Deities of course are there to be worshiped, probably encouraged by ET. Why might ET wish to be worshiped? ET might want to be ‘worshiped’ probably as “thanks” for bringing Homo sapiens into the world and bestowing the gifts of civilization on Homo sapiens.  Every parent expects a “thank you” from their child for special gifts bestowed. ET might have encouraged this misinterpretation as being ‘gods’; it would have been a lot less awkward that explaining astrobiology to them.

Having completed at long last their objective – one more race primed to join the Galactic Club, ET left, albeit leaving behind a token observational team – UFOs – which are still undertaking some genetic modifications with respect to Homo sapiens – alien abductions, apparently an attempt to engineer yet another hybrid – a human-alien.

Now make of this what you will, but the scenario does fit the facts as we know them about human origins, evolution, extinctions, migrations, and ultimately civilization. It also jives with our mythologies, and, IMHO, behind every mountain of mythology resides a molehill of fact.

Prehistoric Migrations: Issues Arising: Part Two

Author’s Note: The scenarios within are those of a timeframe from roughly 13,000 to 200,000 years before the present, and thus way before the era of agricultural settlements. We’re dealing with our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors here. Key dates are: African origin of modern humans, Homo sapiens, at about 200,000 years ago; an Out-of-Africa migration started roughly 70,000 years ago; our global colonization (except for Antarctica and Oceania) was completed by 13,000 years ago.

Modern humans originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago – give or take. Further on down the timeline, some band(s) of African humans eventually migrated Out-of-Africa and ultimately colonized Planet Earth. That’s the standard anthropological model. However, within that standard scenario lie a lot of anomalous issues, some of which are explored here. An attempt to resolve these anomalies is presented.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

Problem Three: Connect the Dots

There are two main types of clues that reveal our likely migration patterns. Firstly, there are those archaeological sites and from those trained professionals one can usually deduce what hominid species was present and from various dating methods, when. The problem is that such sites are all too few and far between. So, maybe you have an Australian Aboriginal site around the Perth area (S.W. coast) dated to say 30,000 years ago. Then say you have another site around the Sydney area (S.E. Coast) dated to 20,000 years ago. So the conclusion is that some Aborigines migrated from Perth to Sydney over the 10,000 year interval. But there is no sites in-between, so you don’t really know if they migrated in a straight line between the two areas or was it all just a total zigzag. Maybe neither if there is yet an undiscovered third site, say in Darwin (mid-North Coast) from 40,000 years ago, and some Darwin Aborigines followed the west coast route to Perth taking 10,000 years and some others the east coast trek to Sydney taking a span of 20,000 years. You can just about connect the dots anyway you damn well please if it gives evidence to your pet theory.

The second line of evidence is using mitochondrial DNA found in modern humans to try and work back migration routes. For example, if mitochondrial DNA in modern Australian Aborigines has a closer mitochondrial DNA match to modern Indonesians than to modern Fijians, then one might conclude that the Aborigines migrated to Australia from Indonesia and not from Fiji. I personally don’t like this sort of genetic evidence. Firstly, DNA mutates over time. Evolution would be screwed if it didn’t. Secondly, there’s been an awful lot of comings and goings since these initial Out-of-Africa migrations commenced. Thirdly, there’s been an awful lot of breeding between the races so that by now hardly anyone is ‘pure’ anything. Still, the experts put a lot of faith in the testing, so who am I to dispute their ways and means?

So, how do you get from Point A to Point B tens of thousands of years ago when Points A and B are separated by vast ocean distances? Why do you go from Point A to Point B when Point B is relatively undesirable? How in fact do we really know that Points A and B are the be-all-and-end-all of start and finish?

Let’s say Point A is lovely Hawaii, and Point B is the vast arid desert of outback Central Australia. How do you get from A to B? You can’t walk and follow the coastline. You can’t drive or ride a horse. You could build a boat and sail but that’s a hell of a leap of courage you’ve got to master, and in any event you haven’t any idea what direction to head in or that Australia even exists. And even if you did, why would you want to leave Hawaii (Site A) for the Australian Outback; and if you did reach the Outback (Site B) why wouldn’t you turn right around and head back to Hawaii again?

Well, you could be flown non-stop from Hawaii to Central Australia. We crossed over ocean barriers because we were airlifted over them. You could be flown to Central Australia and stranded there. For the same reason, we didn’t voluntarily adopt the tundra as home – it was forced on us as an adapt do-or-die experiment. Flight would also explain the lack of relevant archaeological sites between A and B. If our ancient ancestors nomadically walked thousands of miles between Point A and Point B, you’d expect archaeological evidence to be found along the assumed connect-the-dots route. But if you fly, or are flown, then of course you wouldn’t find any in-between sites containing any relevant archaeological evidence.

Resolutions

Right about now every physical anthropologist reading this is sticking very long and very sharp pins in J.P. voodoo dolls and calling me all sorts of unprintable names. Of course our ancient ancestors didn’t have the technology at hand to fly, so of course no flying machines have been found in the prehistoric archaeological record either. My obvious suggestion here is that ancient astronauts, the ‘gods’ of old (and there’s some evidence that even 30,000-50,000 years ago our ancient ancestors had grasped the concept of the supernatural and of supernatural entities), genetically engineered all of the various Homo something or other from earlier hominids which in turn were artificially selected and bred from African primates, like the chimpanzee. We collectively, Homo something or other, were genetically engineered and given all those anomalous traits associated with Homo something or other, like a super-high IQ, bipedal gait, racial facial and individual facial uniqueness.

From their central African laboratory, Homo something or other was then dispersed over thousands of years as specific and individual experiments in colonization. We were transported here and there, left to our own devices to survive or not – sink or swim.  In most cases it was sink and extinction. But, now and again, it was survival – we floated and we swam. Ultimately nearly all of the Homo something or other went kaput, but Homo sapiens achieved a positive result. We were that robust species (us – modern humans) the end product of all of the engineering and colonization experimentation. At that stage, we were given or taught the gifts of civilization, especially agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago then left petty much alone and to our own devices, with only at-a-distance surveillance – modern UFOs – though some experimentation continues – alien abductions.

There are, IMHO, a couple of other anomalies supporting this wacky idea.

One other anomaly, if we are so crash-hot good to colonise the world (apart from Antarctica and Oceania) and cross some ocean barriers to get to some parts, hence completing the job in the Americas by 13,000 years ago, maybe even way earlier, why didn’t we colonize the Pacific Islands, Oceania east of Australia and west of South America, until really quite recently – starting only some roughly 4000 years before the present, finishing off with New Zealand (except for Antarctica), last cab off the rank way after the start of the Common Era, or A.D. to some. Australia was first populated 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, and New Zealand is just across the road and over the hill, at least compared to the distance back to our African point of origin. Depending on source, it took but 10,000 to 20,000 years to get from Africa to Australia, yet some 70,000 years to get from Africa to New Zealand. Something’s screwy somewhere, but that reinforces the idea that ocean voyages are a relatively recent ability of ours, and therefore, way back when, we didn’t sail across the oceans blue to Australia, Japan, Sri Lanka, etc. but were taken there.

Another apparent anomaly – while it takes but roughly 60,000 years to colonize the world once we’re Out-of-Africa (except Antarctica and Oceania), it took roughly 130,000 years just to get Out-of-Africa, as if something or someone was blocking our path until they were good and ready to release us into the global wild!

Now reports of aerial machines, flight technologies, are not unknown in the archaeological and/or historical record, albeit not prehistorically far back, rather in the era of recorded ancient history, say the last 10,000 years or so. From the ‘Star’ of Bethlehem, to the Wheel of Ezekiel, to the ‘Sun’ and ‘Moon’ that Joshua stood still (Biblical Mythology); the ‘flaming cross’ of Constantine, to Vimanas which are Hindu mythological flying machines (mythical self-moving aerial cars, a flying chariot of the gods) as related in various Sanskrit epics; to ‘airplane’ models discovered in both ancient Egypt (dated to about 200 BCE) and little gold model ‘airplanes’ from Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican and South American regions, dating from roughly 500 to 800 CE. Scaled-up replicas of these American and Egyptian ‘aircraft’ have found them to be aerodynamically flight worthy. There are also no shortages of art works from antiquity that at face value appear to show what today would be called Flying Saucers, or Daylight Discs, or just plain Unidentified Flying Objects. Finally, aerial ‘chariots’ and extremely large ‘birds’ that ferry the ‘gods’ around are more the norm than not in many mythologies. 

Prehistoric Migrations: Issues Arising: Part One

Author’s Note: The scenarios within are those of a timeframe from roughly 13,000 to 200,000 years before the present, and thus way before the era of agricultural settlements. We’re dealing with our nomadic hunter-gatherer ancestors here. Key dates are: African origin of modern humans, Homo sapiens, at about 200,000 years ago; an Out-of-Africa migration started roughly 70,000 years ago; our global colonization (except for Antarctica and Oceania) was completed by 13,000 years ago.

Modern humans originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago – give or take. Further on down the timeline, some band(s) of African humans eventually migrated Out-of-Africa and ultimately colonized Planet Earth. That’s the standard anthropological model. However, within that standard scenario lie a lot of anomalous issues, some of which are explored here. An attempt to resolve these anomalies is presented.

When it comes to humans, here defined as Homo something or other, not necessarily just Homo sapiens, colonizing the world from Ground Zero, that’s Africa, well several problems arise.

Humans (as in Homo sapiens) originated in Africa and some ultimately did, slowly, ever so slowly, migrate Out-of-Africa (not that they actually were aware of this), eventually spreading out and colonizing the world (apart from Antarctica and Oceania east of Australia and west of South America) by at least 13,000 years ago. Exactly how is not fully understood, least of all by me. The central, but not exclusive, issue I have is with respect to our ways and means of trading in being exclusively nomadic land-lubbers for acquiring sophisticated maritime abilities as well; abilities required if our global colonization scenario is to be believed.

Problem One: Boats Required but No Show-Boats Found

When it comes to human migrations, there are certain lands that have been colonized by both Homo sapiens and Homo erectus that involved crossing reasonably vast expanses of ocean – vast at least for those cultures that existed over 60,000 years ago, when, for example, Australia was colonized by what’s today known as the Australian Aborigine. Even earlier, Homo erectus island-hopped the numerous Indonesian islands as attested to by fossil evidence. In both cases, these ancient cultures had to have acquired rather extensive boat-making, sailing and navigation skills that would allow a large enough population to cross over the ocean waters, since even during Ice Age conditions, these Indonesian islands, and Australia, were still isolated by oceans.

Sailing the oceans blue: that’s a pretty big ask for primitive humans all those tens upon tens of thousands of years ago. But, there’s another way of crossing the ocean blue – we do it all the time today. We don’t sail, we fly. Perhaps our ancient ancestors were flown to Australia and the Indonesian isles! Since aerial technology is even more outlandish than maritime technology, well, perhaps the aerial technology belonged to advanced beings – ancient aliens or ancient astronauts. One other observation in favour – there are fossil finds of this or that hominid species at A, B & C. Alas, geographical points A, B, & C are separated by thousands upon thousands of miles. No fossils are found at any points in-between A & B, or B & C. An obvious explanation, they didn’t migrate between A & B and B & C at several tens of kilometres per generation; they were flown from A to B to C, thus explaining the lack of fossils in-between - but more about that shortly.

Sooner or later in your nomadic hunter-gatherer wanderings you’re going to intersect the seashore! Rivers and streams you can wade across or swim across, maybe use a buoyant log to hold on to if need be. Lakes can be walked around. But the ocean!!! The oceans offshore must have been terrifying to our very ancient ancestors, and rightly so. The ocean is nothing if not unpredictable and dangerous: from huge waves, gales, riptides, strong currents, razor-sharp rocks and shoals, sharks, jellyfish, hypothermia, and just all sorts of unknowns lurking beneath the surface to add to your terrors. The tides must have seemed to be a purely supernatural manifestation, without natural explanation, an unexplainable action of the gods somehow saying “this is our domain, keep away”.

Would you rather be high and dry 10 miles inland or 10 miles out to sea trying to keep your head above water and not ending up as fish-food? It takes way less effort sit on the beach than to swim or sail in or on the ocean, and it’s a lot safer too!

Further, in most cases with no other land in sight, you haven’t a clue what’s on the other side of the ocean, if anything (maybe it goes on forever and forever), or how far across it is to the other side, and in any event you and your band of nomadic hunter-gatherers have more pressing needs, like finding today’s food and tonight’s shelter. The coastlines and seashores offers an abundance of food stuffs and resources: shellfish, crabs, turtles, seals, seabirds, fish, even seaweed (dried for fuel). Coastlines and seashores are good.

Are you really going to stop, make a raft and go sailing out into the pure unknown out of pure curiosity, though curiosity you probably have? No, in the daily hunt for survival you’ll probably ignore the ocean and just follow the coastline – which eventually will bring you to most places. If you come to an impassable barrier, it’s probably easier and far safer to trek inland for awhile than divert resources to swimming or rafting around the barrier with all the dangers that could entail. In any event, it’s not all that east building and sailing and navigating a seaworthy boat or raft from scratch without any handy-dandy how-to manual available. Further, you can’t drink the seawater so freshwater would have to be carried on any hypothetical voyage. Do you have leak-proof containers? If so, how much do you need to take? Who knows?

There are four possible or realistic routes out of Africa. Even during the Ice Ages when sea levels were lower, three involve an ocean crossing, which, I suggest our ancient ancestors would avoid. I think it is far easier, and safer, to just follow the coastline, so I opt for the sole land route, up the west coast of the Red Sea and on up either into the Levant, or back down the east coast of the Red Sea and on into Arabia. You can follow the African coastline ‘Out of Africa’ and eventually reach China, but not Australia, or Japan, or lots of S.E. Asian islands, the Channel Islands (off Southern California), Sri Lanka, etc. Yet you find ancient human and human artefact remains in these places, so our migrating nomadic ancestors obviously did build boats or rafts and sail the ocean blue and satisfy that curiosity, but the real why is unexplained – curiosity is not motive enough to put yourself in harms way. The fly in the ointment, in any event, and alas and alack, there are no boats or rafts to be found, actual remains or pictorial representations, in the prehistoric archaeological record. Boats and rafts are all probable boats and rafts; boats and rafts are assumed but not proven by any actual evidence. It’s a sort of ’Catch-22’. Boats and rafts must be, yet we can’t find them!

It must be said that because of the Ice Ages, ancient coastlines then are now underwater and presumably relevant telltale archaeology (as in remains of boats) is therefore also underwater. Even so, the issue remains that I find it difficult to believe our ancient ancestors would have been brave enough to stick their toes in the oceans without a damn good reason, yet, there were places colonized by early man that even at the height of the Ice Ages there existed no land bridges for them to cross over, say to Australia, New Zealand, Oceania, Japan, lots of S.E. Asian islands, and presumably lots of other islands, large and small. Conclusion: That’s a big anomaly that needs a resolution.

Problem Two: Paradise Lost

Crossing the oceans blue is just the start of anomalous migration issues. If money, language barriers, cultural differences, political systems, passports and visas, etc. were of no concern and you could travel to and live anywhere you wished, where would it be? Well, probably somewhere not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, nor too dry, a place where there are abundant natural resources of food, fresh water, wood, stone, and probably some sort of ascetically pleasing scenery, etc. With the exception of the scenery, all those other geographical and climatic factors would be even more pressing for our ancient ancestors with no access to supermarkets, hardware stores, air conditioning, central heating and tap water on demand. So the question arises, given a lack of population pressure way back when, a lack of pressure not driving migration away from paradise and toward hell, why did some of our ancient ancestors adopt a nomadic lifestyle in what we’d consider extreme environments, like arid regions, the tundra, etc.? 

Unlike today’s travellers, when our very remote ancestors roamed the plains of Africa, their nomadic wanderings or migrations were not geography directed. In an era where there was no radio and TV, newspapers and magazines, GPS and the Internet, encyclopaedias and travel agents, there was no knowledge of what was over the hill, beyond the horizon. Food availability directed your travels and migrations. You exhausted one patch of turf – you moved on to the next, and the next, and the next in a sort of random drunkards walk. Logic dictates that even so you didn’t wander out of paradise or a reason facsimile thereof. But eventually, like a drop of ink diffusing through a glass of water, the rest of the world, paradise, hell and points in-between, got invaded by our African out-of-towners – an invasive pest species that was to bring total death and destruction in their wake, but that’s another story. Anyway, why we colonized extremely hostile environments when more pleasant alternatives were available needs a resolution.

To be continued…