7 ms·
Hunter-gatherer sea voyages extended to remotest Mediterranean islands
- throw0101a 2y agoFor the very early history of the Med—geological to 500 BC—I found the book The Making of the Middle Sea by Cyprian Broodbank to be an interesting read; ToC: > One: A Barbarian History • Two: Provocative Places • Three: The Speciating Sea (1.8 million – 50,000 years ago) • Four: A Cold Coming We Had of It (50,000 years ago – 10,000 BC) • Five: Brave New Worlds (10,000 –5500 BC) • Six: How It Might Have Been (5500 – 3500 BC) • Seven: The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (3500 – 2200 BC) • Eight: Pomp and Circumstance (2200 – 1300 BC) • Nine: From Sea to Shining Sea (1300 – 800 BC) • Ten: The End of the Beginning (800 – 500 BC) • Eleven: De Profundis * https://thamesandhudson.com/the-making-of-the-middle-sea-9780500026441 https://thamesandhudson.com/the-making-of-the-middle-sea-978... * https://archive.org/details/makingofmiddlese0000broo https://archive.org/details/makingofmiddlese0000broo * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian_Broodbank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyprian_Broodbank
- yannis 2y agoThanks, I read the book and yes it is interesting an with a well written narrative.
- AnimalMuppet 2y agoUnanswered (and probably unanswerable) question: Was it deliberate? Or did they get blown off course while trying to go somewhere much shorter, and wind up hitting Malta before they sank or hit somewhere else?
- deepsun 2y agoOr deliberately blown off to a random place.
- potato3732842 2y agoYou can see Malta from Sicily if conditions are just right. There's zero chance the inhabitants didn't know there was something there, just a matter of time until someone decides to make the trip.
- davidw 2y ago"Gilgamesh's Island"
- arbuge 2y agoI'm from Malta. It's dead center in the Mediterranean sea, just 60 miles off the coast of Sicily, and always has been a melting point of cultures from around the Mediterranean as a result. This is literally the first time in my life I've heard it described as remote.
- apercu 2y agoAnd during ice ages, even closer to continental settlements. I think I remember (speculation?)that there might have even been a land bridge to Sicily?
- arbuge 2y agoCorrect.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago60 miles off the coast during premodern times seems pretty remote to me. How long would that be on makeshift raft an oar? A days journey or longer with smooth seas?
- ch4s3 2y agoThe early European hunter-gatherers uses something like dugout canoes, and examples dating back 7k years have been found in Italy. Experienced paddlers with good wind and current conditions could cover 60 miles in about a day. The 90 miles form Sicily to Tunisia is also possible to cover in such a canoe, and DNA form skeletal remains does indeed show that people made the journey.
- brandall10 2y agoRoughly 40-60k years ago a similar length journey was likely made from Timor to Australia, fwiw.
- ch4s3 2y ago
- curtisszmania 2y ago[dead]
- fforflo 2y agoIt's also exciting that their code to actually reproduce these is also available. https://github.com/wccarleton/mesoneomalta https://github.com/wccarleton/mesoneomalta