5 ms·

Neolithic boats found in the Mediterranean reveal advanced nautical technology

99 points by WaitWaitWha 3y ago

borissk 3y ago
People went to Australia and many remote islands in the oceans thousands of years ago. Probably had as good boats as the guys in the Mediterranean.
- jmclnx 3y ago
  Depends upon when :) I thought most migration to Australia was when they were land bridges due to the sea level. But off hand I do not remember when the Polynesian started their migrations, was it 3,000 years ago ? Their boats and navigation were quite remarkable back then. Anyway, makes sense that the Mediterranean area had good boat tech at such an early time. It is a kind of "closed" area and you throw a boat in it, it will run into some land after a rather brief time. So people with faster and reliable water transport would do better than people without. I would not be surprised if they find some good boat tech much much earlier.
  - AlotOfReading 3y ago
    Australasia has not been connected to anywhere else by land for about 50 million years. The land bridges you're remembering are within australasia, particularly new guinea <-> Australia <-> Tasmania.
    - defrost 3y ago
      For better context, 70K years ago the route to Australia was mostly walkable with a few short boat hops in the vicinty of the Wallace Line: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Coastlines-of-Australia-and-NG-S-50-000-years-ago-After-the-initial-spread-of-H-sapiens_fig1_6336100 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Coastlines-of-Australia-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul_Shelf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul_Shelf
      - AlotOfReading 3y ago
        I guess you could call what were probably multiday trips over 100km of water "short hops", but it's not the phrase I'd use.
        defrost 3y ago
        I would, absolutely, if you refer back you can see that in fact I did - but then I grew up in the region, have built boats, have sailed, and been diving with the Sama-Bajau in various parts of their territory. This would be the collision of actual real world relevant experience and ALotOfReading.
        AlotOfReading 3y ago
        The Sama-Bajau and all other modern humans have inherited maritime traditions that are tens of thousands of years old. They're not a good basis for comparison to the people we're discussing, just as you and I aren't. We know very little about these people and their technology, but it's worth pointing out that this is the first definitively established oceanic crossing in human history. In fact, it's one of the few crossings we know about until many thousands of years later in the Holocene. This is something that comes up regularly in these sorts of studies. There's a lot of ideas, skills, and technologies that look "easy" to us because we benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants, but are extremely difficult when you don't have that hindsight. It's entirely possible that this was a monumental feat to these people. It also might not have been, so I avoided describing it either way.
        angiosperm 3y ago
        Neanderthals got to Mediterranean islands using what had to have been boats 200,000 years ago. Of course we know nothing about the boats. It must have been terrifying to be first. One thing we have learned about island populations is that a small population loses cultural knowledge over time. It is reported Tasmanians had lost the secret to making fire by the time Europeans got there, something I find hard to believe. Anyway boats were re-invented many times in pre-history.
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Yes, they had decent boats that had outriggers on them made of lashed logs to steady for ocean travel. They did not have to go super far, and their boats and nautical skills were quite primitive by today's standards, but they were able to get to and populate the Polynesian Islands.
    - 082349872349872 3y ago
      > did not have to go super far The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channels_of_the_Hawaiian_Islands#Kealaikahiki_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channels_of_the_Hawaiian_Islan... in the Hawai'ian islands is where one starts to sail for Tahiti. It was far enough away (4'000+km; ~20 days sail?) to Tahiti that by the time the polynesians made it out there the original Hawai'ian colonists had lost the linguistic distinction between /t/ and /k/ in "kahiki" — but they still knew how to get back. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hōkūleʻa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hōkūleʻa
      - freedomben 3y ago
        Ah thank you, I think I was a little too sleep deprived last night to have commented
- euroderf 3y ago
  The first chapter of James Michener's "Hawaii" is a nice description of what exploring the Pacific in a huge catamaran might have been like. FWIW Taiwan seems to have been the cradle of Pacific seafaring culture.
wolverine876 3y ago
Here's the paper, which might be a better link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299765 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
freedomben 3y ago
If you find this interesting, or just generally want a remarkable overview of human history, I highly recommend the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared diamond. It won a Pulitzer prize in its day, and really is a terrific book. Little dated, having been written in the late '90s, but the vast majority of it is still up to date and very interesting. The author does repeat a few fad claims from the '90s that have been debunked (such as the QWERTY keyboard being intentionally slow), but nothing really substantial.
- makeitdouble 3y ago
  A friendly note to anyone going into it with no other info: Guns, Germs, and Steel reached the status of having its own wikipedia entry [0] and is very widely known, with enough controversy to fuel endless debates on historical subreddits. Enjoy your read and be prepared when you'll want to share your thoughts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
  - kuhewa 3y ago
    Co-signed, worth reading but please don't quote the book at cocktail parties unless it is a claim you have independently (of the book) investigated
  - freedomben 3y ago
    Yes absolutely, and thank you! Even as a lay reader (though I have read many other books and The Great Courses on similar material) there were several things I picked up on that are not scholarly at all. The most visible of which is the weird obsession the author has with repeatedly making sure that the reader knows that Europeans are not smarter than anybody else (though explicitly are less smart than Polynesians, an ironic contradiction to the author's own contention just a couple sentences prior that there are no intelligent differences among humans) and that any consideration whatsoever that different societies might have been different and made different choices with different outcomes, is utterly racist and unacceptable. It definitely struck me as very anti-science. But taken as a whole I enjoyed much about the book's approach and there are plenty of great things in there. And I would say about any book, definitely don't take anything as gospel. Always, always, read the criticisms and other discussions before just accepting things as "correct" simply because they were printed in a book.
bookofjoe 3y ago
An iconoclastic recent book: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250858801/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250858801/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...
contingencies 3y ago
If you like this sort of thing, track down the book The Sea-craft of Prehistory by Paul Johnstone. Unfortunately, not available on libgen but may be possible to borrow with an archive.org account or a good library. Published in the 1980s, it broadly summarizes global archaeological evidence to that date and breaks down the major boat-making techniques and their variants and limitations. A particularly well written, clearly illustrated and enjoyable book which I found to be extremely accessible and interesting. Expensive to buy though, used copies ~$120+ Boat building with adzes must have really sucked, but imagine the feeling to a prehistoric human taking their own boat on the open ocean for the first time, especially if they had a sail, invented around this time. On that note, Wikipedia confidently states The invention of the sail was a technological advance of equal or even greater importance than the invention of the wheel, which incidentally is thought to have been invented roughly around the time of these boats. Evidently, rock and sail > rock and roll. The late neolithic - what a time to be alive!

99 points by WaitWaitWha 3y ago

People went to Australia and many remote islands in the oceans thousands of years ago. Probably had as good boats as the guys in the Mediterranean.

jmclnx 3y ago
Depends upon when :) I thought most migration to Australia was when they were land bridges due to the sea level. But off hand I do not remember when the Polynesian started their migrations, was it 3,000 years ago ? Their boats and navigation were quite remarkable back then. Anyway, makes sense that the Mediterranean area had good boat tech at such an early time. It is a kind of "closed" area and you throw a boat in it, it will run into some land after a rather brief time. So people with faster and reliable water transport would do better than people without. I would not be surprised if they find some good boat tech much much earlier.
- AlotOfReading 3y ago
  Australasia has not been connected to anywhere else by land for about 50 million years. The land bridges you're remembering are within australasia, particularly new guinea <-> Australia <-> Tasmania.
  - defrost 3y ago
    For better context, 70K years ago the route to Australia was mostly walkable with a few short boat hops in the vicinty of the Wallace Line: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Coastlines-of-Australia-and-NG-S-50-000-years-ago-After-the-initial-spread-of-H-sapiens_fig1_6336100 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Coastlines-of-Australia-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul_Shelf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul_Shelf
    - AlotOfReading 3y ago
      I guess you could call what were probably multiday trips over 100km of water "short hops", but it's not the phrase I'd use.
      - defrost 3y ago
        I would, absolutely, if you refer back you can see that in fact I did - but then I grew up in the region, have built boats, have sailed, and been diving with the Sama-Bajau in various parts of their territory. This would be the collision of actual real world relevant experience and ALotOfReading.
        AlotOfReading 3y ago
        The Sama-Bajau and all other modern humans have inherited maritime traditions that are tens of thousands of years old. They're not a good basis for comparison to the people we're discussing, just as you and I aren't. We know very little about these people and their technology, but it's worth pointing out that this is the first definitively established oceanic crossing in human history. In fact, it's one of the few crossings we know about until many thousands of years later in the Holocene. This is something that comes up regularly in these sorts of studies. There's a lot of ideas, skills, and technologies that look "easy" to us because we benefit from standing on the shoulders of giants, but are extremely difficult when you don't have that hindsight. It's entirely possible that this was a monumental feat to these people. It also might not have been, so I avoided describing it either way.
        angiosperm 3y ago
        Neanderthals got to Mediterranean islands using what had to have been boats 200,000 years ago. Of course we know nothing about the boats. It must have been terrifying to be first. One thing we have learned about island populations is that a small population loses cultural knowledge over time. It is reported Tasmanians had lost the secret to making fire by the time Europeans got there, something I find hard to believe. Anyway boats were re-invented many times in pre-history.
- freedomben 3y ago
  Yes, they had decent boats that had outriggers on them made of lashed logs to steady for ocean travel. They did not have to go super far, and their boats and nautical skills were quite primitive by today's standards, but they were able to get to and populate the Polynesian Islands.
  - 082349872349872 3y ago
    > did not have to go super far The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channels_of_the_Hawaiian_Islands#Kealaikahiki_Channel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Channels_of_the_Hawaiian_Islan... in the Hawai'ian islands is where one starts to sail for Tahiti. It was far enough away (4'000+km; ~20 days sail?) to Tahiti that by the time the polynesians made it out there the original Hawai'ian colonists had lost the linguistic distinction between /t/ and /k/ in "kahiki" — but they still knew how to get back. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hōkūleʻa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hōkūleʻa
    - freedomben 3y ago
      Ah thank you, I think I was a little too sleep deprived last night to have commented
euroderf 3y ago
The first chapter of James Michener's "Hawaii" is a nice description of what exploring the Pacific in a huge catamaran might have been like. FWIW Taiwan seems to have been the cradle of Pacific seafaring culture.

wolverine876 3y ago

Here's the paper, which might be a better link: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299765 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

freedomben 3y ago

If you find this interesting, or just generally want a remarkable overview of human history, I highly recommend the book Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared diamond. It won a Pulitzer prize in its day, and really is a terrific book. Little dated, having been written in the late '90s, but the vast majority of it is still up to date and very interesting. The author does repeat a few fad claims from the '90s that have been debunked (such as the QWERTY keyboard being intentionally slow), but nothing really substantial.

makeitdouble 3y ago
A friendly note to anyone going into it with no other info: Guns, Germs, and Steel reached the status of having its own wikipedia entry [0] and is very widely known, with enough controversy to fuel endless debates on historical subreddits. Enjoy your read and be prepared when you'll want to share your thoughts. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel
- kuhewa 3y ago
  Co-signed, worth reading but please don't quote the book at cocktail parties unless it is a claim you have independently (of the book) investigated
- freedomben 3y ago
  Yes absolutely, and thank you! Even as a lay reader (though I have read many other books and The Great Courses on similar material) there were several things I picked up on that are not scholarly at all. The most visible of which is the weird obsession the author has with repeatedly making sure that the reader knows that Europeans are not smarter than anybody else (though explicitly are less smart than Polynesians, an ironic contradiction to the author's own contention just a couple sentences prior that there are no intelligent differences among humans) and that any consideration whatsoever that different societies might have been different and made different choices with different outcomes, is utterly racist and unacceptable. It definitely struck me as very anti-science. But taken as a whole I enjoyed much about the book's approach and there are plenty of great things in there. And I would say about any book, definitely don't take anything as gospel. Always, always, read the criticisms and other discussions before just accepting things as "correct" simply because they were printed in a book.

bookofjoe 3y ago

An iconoclastic recent book: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250858801/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250858801/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b...

contingencies 3y ago

If you like this sort of thing, track down the book The Sea-craft of Prehistory by Paul Johnstone. Unfortunately, not available on libgen but may be possible to borrow with an archive.org account or a good library. Published in the 1980s, it broadly summarizes global archaeological evidence to that date and breaks down the major boat-making techniques and their variants and limitations. A particularly well written, clearly illustrated and enjoyable book which I found to be extremely accessible and interesting. Expensive to buy though, used copies ~$120+ Boat building with adzes must have really sucked, but imagine the feeling to a prehistoric human taking their own boat on the open ocean for the first time, especially if they had a sail, invented around this time. On that note, Wikipedia confidently states The invention of the sail was a technological advance of equal or even greater importance than the invention of the wheel, which incidentally is thought to have been invented roughly around the time of these boats. Evidently, rock and sail > rock and roll. The late neolithic - what a time to be alive!