A new analysis of Ancient sea trip In the Philippines, over 40,000 years ago, revealed the first verified use of advanced technologies in the region, including the construction of sophisticated boats and perfection fishing capacities of thousands of years earlier than we thought before.
Previous studies have found similar technologies in certain parts of ancient Africa and Europe. However, finding evidence of similar maritime technologies on the island of Southeast Asia (ISEA) could help to resolve the mystery of the way in which the ancient peoples have populated the regions that the millennia before the evolution of modern societies.
Evidence of advanced technology thousands of years ago
In their published study, researchers Riczar Fuentes and Alfred Pawlik of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology of the University of Ateneo in Manila highlight the history of maritime travel throughout prehistory, focusing on advanced technology required to make such trips. For example, they note that evidence of maritime technologies such as ropes and fiber -based nodes were only discovered in other parts of the ancient world.
“Although artifactual evidence of fiber and the use of nodes have been reported from archaeological sites in Africa and Europe during the Pleistocene, the material evidence of this technology is generally limited in ISEA, despite its potentially widespread use for fishing and the sea,” they write.
Previous research has examined how the extraction of the trees by the first Homo Sapiens probably helped the advent of the advent of Maritime trip to the Pacific over 55,000 years ago. Another study catalogating evidence of human occupation in the neighboring regions of Indonesia and Timor revealed that Use of relatively advanced technology to cross the seas over 42,000 years ago.
Several other studies have found evidence of advanced technologies that appear millennia before archaeologists previously believed. These include the use of Hand trucks in the Americas 22,000 years agothe use of a Substance in the form of ochre -based glue by the Neanderthal cousins of modern man Over 40,000 years ago, and even the “Sudden and rapid advance in technologyAround stone tools over 600,000 years ago.
However, researchers at the University of Ateneo de Manila point out that direct evidence of the types of boats used to travel so long distances and that the nets used to capture the deep sea fish have probably been lost because they were almost surely made up of organic matter which would survive for tens of thousands of years. Consequently, the researchers focused on evidence supporting the use of these relatively advanced technologies to show how these ancient people probably crossed the millennia of the oceans before modern Polynesian sailors.
Sophisticated fishing on the high seas and extraction of fibers
The research team has concentrated its study on the ISEA region, because a large part of the region has never been directly linked to continental Asia via terrestrial bridges or recorded glacial caps. The researchers point out that the region also gave artifacts showing human occupation 42,000 years ago, which means that humans had to cross the sea to get there. Unfortunately, like wood and fiber -based materials would only survive today, whatever the technology they used to make these level passages.
The team began to disentangle the mystery by performing a microscopic analysis of several stone tools collected on these archaeological sites. According to the researchers, this analysis revealed identifiable traces of plant treatment on several stone tools. The evidence was the most substantial for the extraction of the fibers used to make strings, nets and connections, an essential cutting -edge technology for long -distance travel.
In addition, the team studied the materials collected on archaeological sites in Mindoro and Timor-Leste. These efforts have revealed hooks, gorges and weights used in fishing nets. The site has also produced the remains of deep fish and “pelagic” predators which would be impossible to catch without ropes or nets.
According to the researchers, these results indicate “the capacity of the advanced sea and the knowledge of the seasonality and migration of these fish species”. The researchers also note that the discovery of fishing implements “indicates the need for a strong and well -designed rope for ropes and fishing lines to catch marine fauna.”
Evidence of behavioral modernity?
In the conclusion of the study, researchers at the University of Ateneo de Manila note that finding the artifacts of ancient peoples on these disconnected islands provides “many evidence that the first modern humans were able to cross the sea in the open air”. However, they also note that the circumstances of reason and the way they moved into and through (ISEA) “remain to be settled”.
“The identification of boats building materials by direct or indirect evidence is vital to understand movements in island environments,” they write.
In addition to explaining how these ancient peoples were able to browse great distances to occupy the thousands of islands in the region, the researchers believe that “the connection between the traces of the prehistoric transformation of plants and the wardrobes” used by these ancient people is “undoubtedly an indication of behavioral modernity”.
“The discussion on marine passages partly addresses the complexity of human behavior in island environments,” they write. “However, in terms of traits of behavioral modernity and cognitive complexity directly associated with the prehistoric sea during the Pleistocene, archaeological evidence is rare.”
Study “Test the waters: operation of plants and sailor at the Pleistocene Wallacea“Was published in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports.
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