14 DAY TRIAL // For decades, archaeologists and historians believed that our ancestors and predecessors who moved out of Africa did so on land alone. Discoveries placed the common use of boats way later than the first migrations. However, a new finding appears to turn that theory on its head.
According to an announcement made on Monday, January 3, it would appear that the tools needed for seafaring were available to humans between 130,000 and 700,000 years ago, way earlier than any expert dared hypothesize.
The new data are based on discoveries made on the Greek island of Crete, say officials from the Greek Culture Ministry in a statement. Scientists may have just discovered the earliest signs of a sea trip.
At the location where the recent digs were conducted experts managed to discover rough axes and a number of other tools that dated back hundreds of thousands of years ago.
These artifacts were recovered from the south coast of the island, where shelters had also been discovered beforehand. Crete has been separated from the mainland for at least 5 million years.
This means that there is absolutely no way that the humans were stuck there since the landmass expelled the island. These ancestors must have somehow covered the 40 miles separating Crete from Greece, and researchers say that boats were used for this job.
Indeed, the tools discovered near the shorelines would appear to strengthen this idea. Additionally, if that is true, then there's no reason to believe that our ancestors took to dry land alone when leaving Africa. They may have left the continent on rafts or boats as well.
“The results of the survey not only provide evidence of sea voyages in the Mediterranean tens of thousands of years earlier than we were aware of so far, but also change our understanding of early hominids' cognitive abilities,” the Greek officials say.
The discoveries were made by a team of experts from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Culture Ministry, who were excavating caves and rock shelters near the village of Plakias.
If the tools the archaeologists discovered are confirmed to have been involved in shipbuilding, then the estimated age of the first open-sea journey may be pushed back considerably, Daily Galaxy reports.