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Discover Magazine. Science, Technology and The Future 

05.20.2008

Did Humans Colonize the World by Boat?

Research suggests our ancestors traveled the oceans 70,000 years ago.

by Heather Pringle

Points found on the Channel Islands in California
Image courtesy of Jon Erlandson

What's more, detailed studies of the Southeast Asian coastline of
50,000 years ago showed that an 800-mile-long stretch of islands and
at least eight ocean straits separated the island continent from the
Asian mainland. "By any route, you have to island-hop to Australia,
with one water crossing greater than 44 miles," Erlandson says. "So it
is a real exercise to get across, and the magnitude of that is
illustrated by the fact that, before anatomically modern humans made
the leap, no large-bodied animal ever got all the way across."

But modern humans possessed the wherewithal to paddle to Australia.
With stone knives they could have felled Asia's giant bamboo and then
tied the canes together to make a raft large enough to carry several
passengers. Moreover, they could have navigated by sight for most of
the journey. As they set out from one island to the next, they could
generally have spied at least a smudge of land on the far horizon.

Even where land lay beyond view, ancient mariners could have deduced
its presence from natural indicators such as cloud formations that
tend to gather over islands, mats of drifting land vegetation, and the
flight paths of land-roosting seabirds. Traditional navigators in the
Caroline Islands, northeast of New Guinea, make use of such signs
today, and many researchers believe that our modern human ancestors
possessed the cognitive skills both to perceive the significance of
these indicators and to communicate them to potentially fearful
passengers.

"It looks like seafaring capabilities and seafaring technology have a
much greater antiquity than conventional wisdom among archaeologists
would lead one to expect," says James O'Connell, an archaeologist at
the University of Utah.

"I think water crossing goes with modern language and with modern
art," says Geoff Irwin, an expert on ancient seafaring at the
University of Auckland in New Zealand. "I think they are a package."

GENES AND TOOLS AROUND THE PACIFIC RIM
In the wake of the Australian finds, archaeologists are looking long
and hard at other major migrations of ancient humans. For decades
researchers have promoted the idea that the first Americans were clans
of Siberian big-game hunters who trekked hundreds of miles on foot
over a vast land bridge (where the Bering Strait is now) and came
south from Alaska some 13,000 years ago. But were these Siberian
hunters the first to explore the Americas? Or could they have been
beaten there by skilled mariners exploring ice-choked northern coasts?

Erlandson has been examining this possibility since the late 1990s,
when he read of a dig on the island of Okinawa, some 1,000 miles
southwest of Tokyo. Poring over archaeological reports from the
region, he learned that Japanese researchers had unearthed the
32,000-year-old bones of a child on Okinawa in the 1950s. He also
examined studies of ancient sea levels and a detailed bathymetric map
showing the depth of the seafloor between the islands of Okinawa and
Japan. Some 32,000 years ago, a coastal plain joined Japan to the
Asian mainland, allowing travelers to tramp back and forth by foot.
But they could not have trekked to Okinawa, a distant island even
then. "Several sea voyages would have been required to reach it from
Japan," explains Erlandson, "including one crossing roughly 46 miles
long." Intrigued, he delved further into Japanese archaeological
reports. Other ancient mariners, he discovered, had ventured into
stormier waters to the north: Some 21,000 years ago, people had
paddled boats across 30 miles of choppy water from Honshu to Kozushima
Island to fetch shiny black obsidian, a type of volcanic glass, for
stone tools.

Almost certainly these voyagers traveled in small, sturdy
boats--perhaps a type of kayak--and possessed sufficient seafaring
skill to avoid spills that would lead to hypothermia and death. With
such experience, the mariners and their children could well have
headed northward at least 16,000 years ago. Crossing the straits by
boat and walking the beaches, they could have gradually explored the
coasts of the Kuril Islands, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and the Bering
Land Bridge until finally reaching the west coast of the Americas, a
journey of several thousand miles. A trail of distinctively shaped
points and a telltale pattern of genes support this hypothesis.

Last November an international team of geneticists out of University
College London and the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor published a
key new study of genetic diversity among Native Americans. The
researchers examined repetitive stretches of short DNA sequences known
as microsatellites in DNA samples taken from 422 individuals, ranging
geographically from Chipewyan and Cree individuals in northern Canada
to Guarani and Huilliche people in South America. What they discovered
was that genetic diversity decreased from north to south and was
higher among tribal groups living along the Pacific coast than among
those residing in the continent's interior. This suggested to the team
that the first Americans migrated down the west coast of the Americas;
only later did smaller bands--with less genetic diversity--move
inland. Moreover, another new genetic study by Brazilian researchers
pegs the date for that coastal migration somewhere between 18,000 and
15,000 years ago.

Taken together, the genetic and archaeological evidence now strongly
suggests that ancient mariners from northeast Asia could well have
explored the coast of the Americas at least 12,000 or 13,000 years
ago, and conceivably earlier. Erlandson has found two stone tools and
a bone bead on San Miguel Island that may be 18,000 years old, but he
has yet to confirm the date via further excavation. "We need to know
more," he says.

Just what drew ancient seafarers from northeast Asia to California
remains a puzzle. As they ventured along the southern coast of the
Bering Land Bridge, which was an arid grassland at that time, they
could have pursued both terrestrial and marine prey. Then, as they
moved into coastal North America after ice sheets there began
retreating around 16,000 years ago, they could have continued to dine
on a wealth of coastal foods.

Erlandson believes that kelp forests--rich oases of seaweed--were key
to their success all along the route. Giant kelp grows nearly two feet
a day, reaching lengths of 150 feet in the water. Kelp forests teem
with abalone, rockfish, and other seafood delicacies. Furthermore, the
fronds of kelp are edible, and its stemlike stipe can be cut to create
fishing lines, making it possible to catch fish that live outside the
kelp beds, such as halibut and cod.

Ice Age migrants journeying from kelp forest to kelp forest, Erlandson
says, would have had no need to adjust to strange new ecosystems or
devise brand-new hunting technologies as they pushed along the rim of
the North Pacific. "I think they were just moving along and
exploring," he muses. "It was like a kelp highway."
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