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Hoping along the Commander Islands, Near Islands then Aleutian Islands chain from Kamchatka was likely possible with primitive tech. And those places must have

by brohee 6y ago

Hoping along the Commander Islands, Near Islands then Aleutian Islands chain from Kamchatka was likely possible with primitive tech. And those places must have been hunting paradises to neolithic people so reasons to settle them.

walrus01 6y ago
One of the interesting things I learned in my cursory and brief research of this. Proponents of the theory of migration 10,000 to 12,000 point out that at the glacial maximum, the strait is theorized to have been a grassland. Part of their theory is that people could not have crossed beforehand because of the absence of animals to hunt and eat along the way. I'm not sure how much I believe that the presence of grasslands would be an absolute requirement. In an island hopping theory, killing and eating seals and other beach dwelling large mammals seems equally plausible.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > and other beach dwelling large mammals Like walruses? Sorry..
ncmncm 6y ago
Humans made it to Australia without any Land Bridge. Island hopping is completely plausible: once you have crossed one waterway, the next is easier. We know that populations of humans subsisted on coastal shellfish 50kya. There is no reason to assume they stayed at one place on a coast that had shellfish everywhere along it. Of course all those shell middens are now 30-50m below sea level. If there is an Atlantis, that is, too, for identically the same reason, although the timing would differ. It would be hard to credit an Atlantis originating before, say, 12,000 years ago--sometime in the Younger Dryas cold spell--although up to 20,000 years ago is conceivable.
- sradman 6y ago
  > There is no reason to assume they stayed at one place on a coast that had shellfish everywhere along it. Food is important but so is shelter from the elements. Prior to the development of textiles, an ample supply of animal skins and furs for clothing was important, I think. > If there is an Atlantis... I've tried to address the misconception about what the delta-O-18 data represents with respect to ancient civilization pseudo-science in a separate comment [1]. Delta-temperature Equivalents are misleading. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726
  - ncmncm 6y ago
    As noted elsewhere, seals are available in many places that don't support ruminants. What "ancient civilization pseudo-science" are you referring to? Younger Dryas lowland civilization is as testable as anything else in science. At the moment it is as hypothetical as existence of humans in the Americas before that time was, until recently, and as life on Mars still is. Does the name "Atlantis" distract you? It's as good a name as any for the phenomenon of an inundated civilization. What are you saying the delta-O18 data implies, or fails to imply? Are you suggesting the caves were dry much later than reported in the article, and therefore could have been worked much more recently?
    - sradman 6y ago
      > seals are available in many places that don't support ruminants. My point about shellfish subsistence is that, compared to the island hopping along the Malay Archipelago, any hypothesis about a migration along Beringia has to consider clothing/shelter due to the challenging temperatures. A focus on food energy alone is not sufficient. It was a reminder, not a falsification. The "ancient civilization pseudo-science" I'm referring to is implied from the parent comment [1] that I replied to [2]: > This episode of the Joe Rogan podcast is with "master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade scholar" Randall Carlson. [1] Randal Carlson and Graham Hancock are my target pseudo-scientists. Carlson cites the Younger Dryas era delta-O-18 Greenland ice core data as evidence that a cataclysmic event may have occurred to account for the drastic temperature fluctuations. My point was that delta-O-18 data is often graphed as delta-temperature-equivalents and it is a mistake to interpret this value as true temperature independent of the influx of meltwater into the Atlantic. If you mention an ancient civilization like Atlantis in the context of the Younger Dryas, I'm going to assume that you flirting with Randal-Carlson-like topics that pop-up in HN comments. I'm aware that you are intrigued by the possibility of discovering archeological artifacts covered by the rising sea levels since the last glacial maximum; a valid assumption. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23820540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23820540 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726
- jcranmer 6y ago
  > Humans made it to Australia without any Land Bridge. Island hopping is completely plausible: once you have crossed one waterway, the next is easier. Note that, due to lower sea levels, the largest gap of water they would have had to cross would have been about 100km.
- catalogia 6y ago
  > Humans made it to Australia without any Land Bridge. For that matter they also made it to Hawaii without any land bridges. Polynesian navigators and sailors proved that neither land bridges nor high technology are needed for these sort of daring ocean crossings. Who is to say that other early seafaring cultures couldn't have accomplished similar feats?
  - brohee 6y ago
    The Pacific settlement happened much later (during European middle age for Hawaii), benefiting from 40000 year of technological improvement...
    - catalogia 6y ago
      What specific technology are you referring to? I'm unaware of any Polynesians technology that couldn't plausibly been independently used tens of thousands of years earlier. The accomplishments of the Polynesians seafarers was primarily a matter of skill and oral tradition (something like 4,000 years of seafaring experience, not 40,0000.) Their most important technology was sea-worthy outrigger canoes. Numerous independent canoe cultures exist around the world dating back thousands of years ago. While canoes 40,000 years old haven't been found, I see no real reason to discount the possibility. For navigation they may have used stick charts, although that's not known for sure and the Polynesians may have relied on oral tradition instead. Either way, these technologies or their functional equivalents were plausibly available to cultures predating the Polynesians by thousands of years. There is no evidence that the Polynesians were using astrolabs, sextants, or any other instrument like that, so the relative level of technology used by contemporary European/Islamic/Classical navigators doesn't seem relevant. They used Mark 1 Eyeballs to collect information and processed that information into navigational guidance using their brains, packed with experience. Edit: I've been thinking about the matter of canoes some more. It seems to me that sea-fairing canoes would not preserve well; the earliest known canoe is from around 10,000 years ago and was found in a peat bog in the Netherlands. Peat bogs are well known for preserving buried organic matter. Conversely the oldest polynesian canoes found are only hundreds of years old. We know they were using canoes thousands of years before that because of their oral tradition and clear evidence that they were traveling in the area somehow during that time period, but archeological evidence for the boats is scarce. I don't think sea-fairing canoes are likely to be preserved for thousands of years, so I don't think the lack of archeological evidence for sea-fairing cultures thousands of years ago means much of anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205625/

by brohee 6y ago

walrus01 6y ago

One of the interesting things I learned in my cursory and brief research of this. Proponents of the theory of migration 10,000 to 12,000 point out that at the glacial maximum, the strait is theorized to have been a grassland. Part of their theory is that people could not have crossed beforehand because of the absence of animals to hunt and eat along the way. I'm not sure how much I believe that the presence of grasslands would be an absolute requirement. In an island hopping theory, killing and eating seals and other beach dwelling large mammals seems equally plausible.

catalogia 6y ago
> and other beach dwelling large mammals Like walruses? Sorry..

ncmncm 6y ago

Humans made it to Australia without any Land Bridge. Island hopping is completely plausible: once you have crossed one waterway, the next is easier. We know that populations of humans subsisted on coastal shellfish 50kya. There is no reason to assume they stayed at one place on a coast that had shellfish everywhere along it. Of course all those shell middens are now 30-50m below sea level. If there is an Atlantis, that is, too, for identically the same reason, although the timing would differ. It would be hard to credit an Atlantis originating before, say, 12,000 years ago--sometime in the Younger Dryas cold spell--although up to 20,000 years ago is conceivable.

sradman 6y ago
> There is no reason to assume they stayed at one place on a coast that had shellfish everywhere along it. Food is important but so is shelter from the elements. Prior to the development of textiles, an ample supply of animal skins and furs for clothing was important, I think. > If there is an Atlantis... I've tried to address the misconception about what the delta-O-18 data represents with respect to ancient civilization pseudo-science in a separate comment [1]. Delta-temperature Equivalents are misleading. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726
- ncmncm 6y ago
  As noted elsewhere, seals are available in many places that don't support ruminants. What "ancient civilization pseudo-science" are you referring to? Younger Dryas lowland civilization is as testable as anything else in science. At the moment it is as hypothetical as existence of humans in the Americas before that time was, until recently, and as life on Mars still is. Does the name "Atlantis" distract you? It's as good a name as any for the phenomenon of an inundated civilization. What are you saying the delta-O18 data implies, or fails to imply? Are you suggesting the caves were dry much later than reported in the article, and therefore could have been worked much more recently?
  - sradman 6y ago
    > seals are available in many places that don't support ruminants. My point about shellfish subsistence is that, compared to the island hopping along the Malay Archipelago, any hypothesis about a migration along Beringia has to consider clothing/shelter due to the challenging temperatures. A focus on food energy alone is not sufficient. It was a reminder, not a falsification. The "ancient civilization pseudo-science" I'm referring to is implied from the parent comment [1] that I replied to [2]: > This episode of the Joe Rogan podcast is with "master builder and architectural designer, teacher, geometrician, geomythologist, geological explorer and renegade scholar" Randall Carlson. [1] Randal Carlson and Graham Hancock are my target pseudo-scientists. Carlson cites the Younger Dryas era delta-O-18 Greenland ice core data as evidence that a cataclysmic event may have occurred to account for the drastic temperature fluctuations. My point was that delta-O-18 data is often graphed as delta-temperature-equivalents and it is a mistake to interpret this value as true temperature independent of the influx of meltwater into the Atlantic. If you mention an ancient civilization like Atlantis in the context of the Younger Dryas, I'm going to assume that you flirting with Randal-Carlson-like topics that pop-up in HN comments. I'm aware that you are intrigued by the possibility of discovering archeological artifacts covered by the rising sea levels since the last glacial maximum; a valid assumption. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23820540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23820540 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821726
jcranmer 6y ago
> Humans made it to Australia without any Land Bridge. Island hopping is completely plausible: once you have crossed one waterway, the next is easier. Note that, due to lower sea levels, the largest gap of water they would have had to cross would have been about 100km.
catalogia 6y ago
> Humans made it to Australia without any Land Bridge. For that matter they also made it to Hawaii without any land bridges. Polynesian navigators and sailors proved that neither land bridges nor high technology are needed for these sort of daring ocean crossings. Who is to say that other early seafaring cultures couldn't have accomplished similar feats?
- brohee 6y ago
  The Pacific settlement happened much later (during European middle age for Hawaii), benefiting from 40000 year of technological improvement...
  - catalogia 6y ago
    What specific technology are you referring to? I'm unaware of any Polynesians technology that couldn't plausibly been independently used tens of thousands of years earlier. The accomplishments of the Polynesians seafarers was primarily a matter of skill and oral tradition (something like 4,000 years of seafaring experience, not 40,0000.) Their most important technology was sea-worthy outrigger canoes. Numerous independent canoe cultures exist around the world dating back thousands of years ago. While canoes 40,000 years old haven't been found, I see no real reason to discount the possibility. For navigation they may have used stick charts, although that's not known for sure and the Polynesians may have relied on oral tradition instead. Either way, these technologies or their functional equivalents were plausibly available to cultures predating the Polynesians by thousands of years. There is no evidence that the Polynesians were using astrolabs, sextants, or any other instrument like that, so the relative level of technology used by contemporary European/Islamic/Classical navigators doesn't seem relevant. They used Mark 1 Eyeballs to collect information and processed that information into navigational guidance using their brains, packed with experience. Edit: I've been thinking about the matter of canoes some more. It seems to me that sea-fairing canoes would not preserve well; the earliest known canoe is from around 10,000 years ago and was found in a peat bog in the Netherlands. Peat bogs are well known for preserving buried organic matter. Conversely the oldest polynesian canoes found are only hundreds of years old. We know they were using canoes thousands of years before that because of their oral tradition and clear evidence that they were traveling in the area somehow during that time period, but archeological evidence for the boats is scarce. I don't think sea-fairing canoes are likely to be preserved for thousands of years, so I don't think the lack of archeological evidence for sea-fairing cultures thousands of years ago means much of anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pesse_canoe https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205625/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4205625/