Signs of early advanced civilization on earth are getting more and more frequent. I think our understanding of what humanity was up to 50 to 100,000 years ago is very quickly going to be stretched so far that soon we will have to rewrite everything we know about anthropology.

 

“Archaeologists have found evidence of deep-sea fishing 42,000 years ago at Jerimalai, a cave on the eastern end of East Timor.” –

 

When Humans First Plied the Deep Blue Sea

by Michael Balter

 

In a shallow cave on an island north of Australia, researchers have made a surprising discovery: the 42,000-year-old bones of tuna and sharks that were clearly brought there by human hands. The find, reported online today in Science, provides the strongest evidence yet that people were deep-sea fishing so long ago. And those maritime skills may have allowed the inhabitants of this region to colonize lands far and wide.

 

The earliest known boats, found in France and the Netherlands, are only 10,000 years old, but archaeologists know they don’t tell the whole story. Wood and other common boat-building materials don’t preserve well in the archaeological record. And the colonization of Australia and the nearby islands of Southeast Asia, which began at least 45,000 years ago, required sea crossings of at least 30 kilometers. Yet whether these early migrants put out to sea deliberately in boats or simply drifted with the tides in rafts meant for near-shore exploration has been a matter of fierce debate…

 

For the complete piece click here to go to Science Now.

 

 

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