When did the human being thrown into the sea? The human being has had a close relationship with the maritime environment from the dawn of history, but we know that this link comes from beyond what our collective memory reaches. We knew that in the stone age our ancestors were able to throw themselves into the sea. Now we began to see that perhaps their techniques were even more advanced than we thought.
Advanced technology. A team led by Filipino researchers has found remains that would correspond to a prehistoric culture With advanced maritime technologies. This culture would have reached Mindoro, one of the Philippines that never in recent geological history has been linked to Continental Asia, at least 35,000 years ago.
A variety of artifacts. The team’s conclusion is based on a series of objects found in Mindoro deposits, a medium -sized Filipino island located north of the archipelago. Among the objects found are human and animals, including marine animal shells; as well as tools made with stone, bone and the shells themselves.
The team The existence stands out of a culture that will use shells as raw material in the manufacture of tools within the temporal framework of the finding. The deposits, which cover objects of various ages, also include azuelas made of the shells belonging to specimens of the genus Tridacnathe “giant clams.” The inhabitants of Mindoro would have reached this climax of their maritime manufacturing between 7,000 and 9,000 years ago.
Dominating the seas. The fact that humans reached this island already implies an indication of a certain relationship with the marine environment, but the team also found rudimentary hooks made of bone, as well as objects that would have been used as weight in fishing networks.
A “maritime network.” The team also found a more modern grave, about 5,000 years old. As explainedthe burial could be linked to others found in various parts of Southeast Asia, which would suggest “shared ideological and social influences and an emerging social complexity throughout a vast area from the continent to the distant islands.”
The details of the study were published In an article In the magazine Archaeological Research in Asia.
A different map. The last glacial period began about 120,000 years ago and would not end until about 11,500 years ago. During that period the volume of ice in the polar areas was greater, so the sea level was lower.
Environments like Mindoro They serve as an important reference To know better how, where and when the human being achieved owner of the sea.
The Pacific conquest. The discovery fits with the predominant hypotheses indicating that the human being began its expansion through the Pacific Ocean about 45,000 years agostarting from Southeast Asia to New Guinea and Australia. Of course, it would not be until many millennia later (about 3,500 years ago) that humans would begin to expand their habitat to more remote archipelagos such as Samoa or Hawaii.
The new study gives us therefore valuable information about how the humans of that era achieved the inhabitants of Asia to achieve the necessary dominance of the sea to undertake the most recent and perhaps the most surprising of the great migrations, the conquest of the Pacific.
Millennia sailing. We began with the question of when the human being was thrown into the sea. It is a difficult question to answer since technologies such as navigation could appear in different historical moments and in different geographical and cultural contexts. It may even that the first humans to navigate did not belong to our species, the Homo sapiens.
Who then? Probably some species closely linked to ours as Neanderthals (Homo Neanderthalensis); or the mysterious “flowers of flowers” (Homo Floresiensis), more related to the H. erectus. The older indications What do we have and that date back about 700,000 years ago They are linked precisely with this group that would have inhabited the island of Flores, in Indonesia, not so far from the Filipino archipelago where we have now discovered a new piece in the puzzle of human navigation. .
Image | Manila / Gebco Athenaeum
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