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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

OUT OF AFRICA--BY BOAT
As the evidence for Ice Age mariners mounts in Australia, Asia, and
the Americas, researchers are now peering further and further back in
time for traces of seafarers. When and where, they ask, did humans
first journey over the water? One highly controversial piece of
evidence surfaced a decade ago during an excavation at Mata Menge on
the island of Flores in Indonesia. There Michael Morwood, an
archaeologist at the University of New England in Australia, recovered
several stone tools as well as the bones of crocodiles and
stegodonts--extinct elephantlike animals--beneath a layer of volcanic
ash. Geologists dated the finds to some 800,000 to 880,000 years
ago--a time when early humans known as Homo erectus wandered parts of
Southeast Asia. To Morwood, the remains at Mata Menge pointed to a
remarkable human journey. More than 800,000 years ago, he theorized,
H. erectus crossed 12 miles of ocean to reach Flores.

Although the Mata Menge discoveries attracted much media attention,
there is no conclusive evidence that Flores was even an island at the
time. Moreover, archaeologists have yet to find any other strong
evidence of island-hopping by H. erectus. Instead, Erlandson and
others believe that coastal voyaging began with our modern human
ancestors, Homo sapiens. Current research shows that H. sapiens
evolved in Africa some 200,000 years ago and soon took an intense
interest in the sea. At Pinnacle Point, a coastal site in South Africa
that borders the Indian Ocean, Arizona State University archaeologist
Curtis Marean and his colleagues found table scraps from humans'
feasting 164,000 years ago. The favorite item was the brown mussel,
which is exposed in large numbers during low spring tides. "People
think that shellfish are easy to capture, that it's a no-brainer,"
Marean says. "It's not that way at all. There are optimal times to get
shellfish, and going into the water when it's roaring in the
intertidal zone can easily be fatal."

Along the Semliki River in Congo, wandering bands began fishing in
earnest 80,000 years ago. To catch catfish lurking at the bottom of
the river, they devised a lethal new weapon--a composite harpoon
tipped with a beautifully manufactured, symmetrical barbed point
carved from bone. No earlier hominin had ever created such a
specialized technology for systematic fishing. "Those harpoons,"
Erlandson says, "are not like anything the Neanderthals or archaic
humans ever produced. They are extraordinary." With such creative
abilities, ancient water-loving Africans could well have devised a new
technology for fishing deep waters: the raft.

It is even possible, say some seafaring experts, that H. sapiens
spread out of Africa by watercraft 60,000 to 70,000 years ago. Until
recently, most scientists assumed that our modern human ancestors
migrated to Asia on foot via the Sinai Peninsula and the eastern shore
of the Mediterranean. But current genetic research suggests that they
took a more southerly route, crossing from the African coast of the
Red Sea to the Arabian Peninsula and then following the coast to
India. Mitochondrial DNA studies conducted by Lluís Quintana-Murci of
the Pasteur Institute in Paris and a team of international researchers
reveal, for example, that humans migrated from East Africa to western
India more than 50,000 years ago.

Today a 20-mile stretch of choppy water separates Africa from the
Arabian Peninsula. Locals call this strait Bab el Mandeb, or "Gate of
Tears," but it was not always so formidable. University of York
archaeologist Geoff Bailey recently led a major study of the ancient
Red Sea coastline. Between 90,000 and 10,000 years ago, the strait got
as narrow as 2.5 miles across. For Bailey and other coastal
archaeologists, this raises a fascinating question. Could our modern
human ancestors have rafted out of Africa, crossing the mouth of the
Red Sea 60,000 years ago to reach Saudi Arabia? Bailey reflects on
this question a moment. "I think it's entirely possible," he says.

Still, many researchers want more evidence of seafaring. At the
Natural History Museum in London, for example, Chris Stringer, an
expert on modern human origins, continues to lean toward a terrestrial
migration route out of Africa. He believes that boats did not become
necessary until modern humans had already left Africa on foot and
confronted coastal mangrove swamps and great river mouths in southern
Asia. Even so, Stringer is looking at the new evidence carefully,
noting that he is keeping an open mind on the subject.

Twenty years ago, most archaeologists would simply have laughed at the
idea of Ice Age mariners colonizing the globe. These days, as minds
are opening to the possibility, Erlandson and others are beginning to
receive major grants that will speed up the pace of research. "Now
that people are thinking about coastal migration," Erlandson says, "we
have a truly golden opportunity."

Right, from top: An Aleutian man fishes for cod in an 1872 drawing by
Henry Wood Elliott; a replica of a 9,000-year-old dugout, the world's
oldest known boat (the original is now on view at the Drents Museum in
the Netherlands); islanders in the Torres Strait (between Australia
and New Guinea) pose aboard a bamboo raft in a 1906 photo. Below:
Points? found on the Channel Islands in California.
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