heidelbergensis sailors?

[sculptor]

Finding 130,000 year old stone axes on Crete indicates that early ancestors must have mastered watercraft much earlier than previously thought. The dates have been widely accepted. What we don't have is a skeleton from which we could specify a particular ancestor. So the heidelbergensis tag is a guess.

Plausible?

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

Finding 130,000 year old stone axes on Crete indicates that early ancestors must have mastered watercraft much earlier than previously thought. The dates have been widely accepted. What we don't have is a skeleton from which we could specify a particular ancestor. So the heidelbergensis tag is a guess.

Plausible?

H. sapiens sapiens existed then, so no need to go to other species.

 

[spidergoat]

Could have floated on a log or something. Even orangutans can do that.

 

[mathman]

H. sapiens sapiens existed then, so no need to go to other species.

Current theory has homo sapiens leaving Africa ~ 100,000 years ago. Maybe Neanderthals on Crete.

 

[Walter L. Wagner]

Current theory has homo sapiens leaving Africa ~ 100,000 years ago. Maybe Neanderthals on Crete.

H. sapiens sapiens as a species existed some 120,000 years ago in North Africa, as per previous posts. H. sapiens neanderthalensis, as a species, existed some 250,000 years ago in Europe. It is quite plausible that either, or both, were sailing the mediterranean back then, especially since Crete as an island was much closer to dry land back then, as the mediterranean was some nearly 200 meters lower in level than presently, since the Ice Age meltdown circa 18,000 to 12,000 years ago.

 

[sculptor]

eemian interglacial, circa 130-115kybp, sea levels were most likely about 5-7 meters higher than today.
The oldest horizon for stone "axes" on Crete was 130,000 years--------------during the eemian.

(wild guess) as the glacial period previous to the eemian was winding down and the climate warming, people ventured farther north

pity we ain't got the bones

 

[CEngelbrecht]

There's 94,000 year old tools found on Flores in Indonesia too, which could be the earliest possible Homo floresiensis (which is said to resemble erectus more than sapiens). So early water crossing by hominins is not limited to Crete. The team who found Flo claims to even have found hominin tools 840,000 years old on the island. And Flores seems to have always been a separate island. Also, you have the recent find of a 540,000 years old shell with zigzag art carved into it from Java. So warm water island hopping could actually be an early hominin standard.

 

[sculptor]

The psychology of anthropology is a fascinating romp through our shared prejudices/taboos.
The shared assumption/prejudice is that WE have evolved into something better-different than that which has gone before.
Primitive = lower life form, incapably of our abstract reasoning, art, and culture.
Perhaps, we are/were wearing blinders.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

The psychology of anthropology is a fascinating romp through our shared prejudices/taboos.
The shared assumption/prejudice is that WE have evolved into something better-different than that which has gone before.

The only real measure we have to compare ourselves to our ancestors is the size of their brains, especially the forebrain where we do our conscious thinking. The volume of the Neanderthal brain is essentially equal to ours. I haven't seen the figures on the other Homo species.

Our closest living relatives are the two species of chimpanzee. If I recall correctly, the size of their forebrain is about 1/3 of ours. Nonetheless, they have learned to communicate in American Sign Language.

It was long thought that the Neanderthal brain did not have a speech center like ours, which would have limited them to sign language, as depicted in Jean Auel's Earth's Children series of novels, beginning with Clan of the Cave Bear. That was a central motif in the books, since the sapiens could learn the Neanderthal's language, but not vice versa, giving the sapiens a sense of superiority. However, long after she wrote the first book that set the stage for the environment and history, paleontologists with more advanced instruments discovered that their brains were in fact not much different from ours after all.

Primitive = lower life form, incapable of our abstract reasoning, art, and culture.

Many warm-blooded vertebrates that have considerably smaller brains than ours have, nonetheless, impressed us with their reasoning ability and their sense of aesthetics.

 

[CEngelbrecht]

The only real measure we have to compare ourselves to our ancestors is the size of their brains, especially the forebrain where we do our conscious thinking. The volume of the Neanderthal brain is essentially equal to ours. I haven't seen the figures on the other Homo species.

Or indeed larger by average, which is still not said outloud too much. And then there's the debate of the reduction in brain size also in Homo sapiens over the last 40,000 years.

Doing with less: hominin brain atrophy
Robert G Bednarik 2014
doi 10.1016/j.jchb.2014.06.001
HOMO Journal of Comparative Human Biology
online 19.9.14

In contrast to hominin encephalization, the final Pleistocene and Holocene reduction in cranial volume [Say what ...?] has attracted very little attention and remains unexplained. Here it is examined in the light of current neuroscientific and archaeological understanding, and it is shown that the most parsimonious explanation is via the domestication hypothesis of recent humans. Accordingly, rapid atrophy of the brain is partly explained by the culturally-based process of sexual selection, first detectable in late robust Homo sapiens perhaps 40,000 years ago. Furthermore it is suggested that this deleterious process of neotenization and brain atrophy was compensated for by the concurrent development of exograms, i.e. means of storing memory outside the brain. Consequently most of human memory and cultural information is now stored external to the brain, which has altered that organ significantly and facilitated a cultural complexity that would be impossible to maintain by biological memory alone. The escalating use of exograms, neotenization and reduction in cranial volume all appear to co-occur with numerous other changes to the human genome.

Also: http://phys.org/news/2010-03-cro-magnon-skull-brains-shrunk.html

I have to say, I think there are way too many unfounded assumptions about the cognitive level of our recent Homo relatives, that borders on racism.

Our closest living relatives are the two species of chimpanzee. If I recall correctly, the size of their forebrain is about 1/3 of ours. Nonetheless, they have learned to communicate in American Sign Language.

Yeah well, there's an elephant in a zoo in South Korea, that has learned to utter a few Korean words. And there's the old talking seal from the 80s. Much like that more illustrates social behavior in a species than anything else.

 

[timojin]

Current theory has homo sapiens leaving Africa ~ 100,000 years ago. Maybe Neanderthals on Crete.

Current theory is pretty lousy. You and me we carry neanderthal genes , I believe Neanderthal was in Europe about 400 000 years ago and how about Heidelberger it is even older
Question : what do we want to call modern. other question Africa : what part of Africa.

 

[sculptor]

Sima de los huesos-----------pit of the bones in Spain
thigh bone thought to be from proto neanderthal(via morphology) has Denisovan mitochondrial dna

the pit has heidelbergensis, protoneanderthal, and now denisovan bones dated to 400-430,000kybp

some neanderthals and some heidelbergensis had larger brain carriages than "modern man".
the heidelbergensis with larger skulls, were also much taller than most sapiens sapiens

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Eat your fish, kids

 

[sculptor]

Eat your fish, kids

from the link:

Fatty fish from marine temperate/cold waters yield twice as much DHA and four times as much EPA as tropical fish, demonstrating that a latitudinal shift in exploitation of African coastal ecosystems could constitute a significant difference in LC-PUFA availability with possible implications for brain development and functioning

Question
During the glacial phases were the oceans cooler at lower latitudes?
Would this then have the same benefit?

 

[CEngelbrecht]

from the link:

Fatty fish from marine temperate/cold waters yield twice as much DHA and four times as much EPA as tropical fish, demonstrating that a latitudinal shift in exploitation of African coastal ecosystems could constitute a significant difference in LC-PUFA availability with possible implications for brain development and functioning

Question
During the glacial phases were the oceans cooler at lower latitudes?
Would this then have the same benefit?

You know, maybe that was the reason, why Neanderthals is the hominin with the largest brain so far. That they ate seafood from colder regions, containing more of the brain selective nutrients. And the reason why Homo sapiens has seen a slight reduction in brain size the last 40kya is because they were cultures that secured more of their food from terrestrial big game hunting on the Eurasian plains. Which secured sapiens more calories and thus gave them a benefit in the competition with neanderthalensis, even though in the process it saw sapiens lose a bit of that brain, we're so bloody proud of.

 

[sculptor]

Brain size without comparison to body mass becomes misleading.
The brain size to body mass ratio seems to offer a more accurate picture.
Any idea of the body mass of the cromagnon to which Hawkes et.al were reffering?

 

[CEngelbrecht]

Brain size without comparison to body mass becomes misleading.
The brain size to body mass ratio seems to offer a more accurate picture.
Any idea of the body mass of the cromagnon to which Hawkes et.al were reffering?

According to John Hawks, roughly the same as ours. Neanderthals were shorter but more stocky than Cro Magnon, so they weighed roughly the same. And Neanders had a slighty bigger brain than Magnons. And we're today behind Magnons. I compiled a list some years back on brain values for hominids (attached). CC/BM is only one step in trying to define the so-called encephalization quotient, but on that account alone we're behind schedule.

 

[sculptor]

According to John Hawks, roughly the same as ours. Neanderthals were shorter but more stocky than Cro Magnon, so they weighed roughly the same. And Neanders had a slighty bigger brain than Magnons. And we're today behind Magnons. I compiled a list some years back on brain values for hominids (attached). CC/BM is only one step in trying to define the so-called encephalization quotient, but on that account alone we're behind schedule.

nice chart
No wonder it is said that women are smarter than men(aside from the fact that when younger we often thought with the heads or our penises)
as/re your chart: The female cc/bm is 7.8% higher than that of the male.

Personally, I would prefer a case by case individual by individual ratio/quotient. Then average the results, while keeping the outliers in mind.
..............
A cursory glance would reveal a rapid increase in gross cranial capacity up to and including heidelbergensis. Then stagnated somewhat.

What we do know:
Different areas of the brain support different functions.

The question obtains:
Can we determine which areas have remained the same, which have atrophied, and which(if any) have increased?

 

[Yazata]

Finding 130,000 year old stone axes on Crete indicates that early ancestors must have mastered watercraft much earlier than previously thought. The dates have been widely accepted. What we don't have is a skeleton from which we could specify a particular ancestor. So the heidelbergensis tag is a guess.

Plausible?

Were they really stone axes? Stone tools are often hard to identify with certainty. If they were, are they being dated correctly?

Assuming that all checks out and these really are human artifacts, I'm inclined to agree with Mathman that these were most likely Neanderthals.

Did they arrive by sea or by land? Sea levels were lower during the ice ages and perhaps Crete was part of the mainland at the time these people arrived.

But yeah, I think that there is evidence of sea travel, at least on a limited scale, very early. The earliest water vehicles were most likely rafts drifting with the currents, not boats or ships. Probably no sails in those days (no textiles for one thing). Maybe paddling, though that would work better with dugout canoes and this seems awfully early for them.

So it probably isn't totally outside the realm of possibility. Maybe people were making for an island right off shore on a raft, were pulled off-course by a current, drifted and ended up on Crete. If there were no other humans there, it might have seemed a nice place.

 

[sculptor]

Here's the link to an article:
http://www.archive.archaeology.org/1005/trenches/voyage.html

and another:
http://news.discovery.com/human/evolution/ancient-hominids-sailors-seas.htm
and:
http://archive.archaeology.org/1101/topten/crete.html

If the later date(130kybp) is the limit, that could be too late for heidelbergensis, so most likely neanderthalensis.
If the earlier date(700kybp) is accurate, then most likely heidelbergensis.

Either way, it seems most likely that they must have traveled over water.
The shortest water travel distance would have been from the north.
However, eastern Mediterranean currents tend to run anticlockwise, so Anatolia is also a possibility launch site.

I ain't actually touched nor seen the artifacts, so must take Curtis Runnels' and Thomas Strasser's word for the finds.