going to sea much longer than anyone had ever suspected. That is the
startling implication of discoveries made the last two summers on the
Greek island of Crete. Stone tools found there, archaeologists say,
are at least 130,000 years old, which is considered strong evidence
for the earliest known seafaring in the Mediterranean and cause for
rethinking the maritime capabilities of prehuman cultures.
Crete has been an island for more than five million years, meaning
that the toolmakers must have arrived by boat. So this seems to push
the history of Mediterranean voyaging back more than 100,000 years,
specialists in Stone Age archaeology say. Previous artifact
discoveries had shown people reaching Cyprus, a few other Greek
islands and possibly Sardinia no earlier than 10,000 to 12,000 years
ago.
The oldest established early marine travel anywhere was the sea-
crossing migration of anatomically modern Homo sapiens to Australia,
beginning about 60,000 years ago. There is also a suggestive trickle
of evidence, notably the skeletons and artifacts on the Indonesian
island of Flores, of more ancient hominids making their way by water
to new habitats.
Read entire article at --
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/science/16archeo.html
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