Beginnings

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Always ahead of the curve here. I sent this to a friend back in 2021 (and edited slightly here.) Lately I’ve started seeing this line of reasoning show up in Wikipedia and other science literature and media. If I have posted this before, please forgive me, but this just really tickles me.

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I was wondering about just how long ago did humans really start using boats, so I did some research. I stumbled across this interesting factoid in Wikipedia:

“early hominids crossed the sea and colonized the Philippine island of Luzon in a time frame as early as 777,000 to 631,000 years ago”

Three quarters of a million years ago! That was Homo erectus. Homo sapiens only appeared about 125,000 years ago.

There are theories about ancient people drifting accidentally across oceans on fallen trees, but they are really lame. Even though it might be possible for one person to do it accidentally over a few miles of water, that’s only one person and they would die - either of illness, predation, or old age within a few years. Ancient humans could not survive alone for very long. And even if another human of the opposite gender and reproductive age did come along during their life, you’d still only have one couple and the resulting incest, if their descendants tried to continue the line, would cause it to die out. Crossing more than a few miles would require that they bring along water and would then no longer be accidental. Only by intention could any humans (H. erectus or H. sapiens) cross a substantial water body to another island in sufficient numbers to form a viable community.

I went and looked up Luzon on Google Earth. If they went directly across from the mainland that would be over 400 miles of open ocean. If they went to Taiwan and then island hopped, the longest sail would still be over 100 miles. If they started in Thailand and island hopped along a very long spiral path the longest sail that I found would still be across 60 miles of open ocean. These are deep waters and even drastic sea level changes would only reduce the distances by a percent or two. There is a line called the Wallace Line “that separates the biogeographical realms of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia”. Non flying mammal species were not distributed across this line until humans came along. That means those ancient humans probably didn’t accidentally drift across 400, or even 60, miles of open ocean to Luzon.

Now think about it. You are boaters, not academics sitting at desks. Picture clinging to a tree and being washed out to sea from a flooding river or something. What’s going to happen? Is the tree going to drift 60 or 100 or 400 miles in a straight line? No. I’ve lived next to the ocean for many year. The tree will wash out a bit and a current will catch it. That current will take it laterally and usually just deposit it back on the shore of the same place it came from. Or if it is washing from an island, the current will just carry it off into the bid, wide ocean, not across a channel to the next island. They currents go cross-wise between those islands! And if, by some miracle, the tree made the meandering course to the next island, it will probably only travel a couple of miles per hour or less, so will take many days or even weeks to make the trip. Someone clinging to a tree isn’t going to last that long in that situation. Especially not enough people to form a viable population once they arrive at the new island.

Those distances could obviously only be traveled by some sort of boat or controllable raft. And you know someone didn’t just scratch his head one day, design a boat, and then sail it over 100s of miles of open ocean. They must have been using boats for hundreds or thousands of years in order to develop the technology and the sailing and navigational skills to make such long crossings - and how many times did they sail eastwards before they even realized that there were islands out there? It seems likely that boating and seafaring must have been commonly practiced up to 777,000 years ago. By Homo erectus. Amazing.

Anyway, I hoped you might find the thought interesting: that we have probably been boating and boat building since even before we were Homo sapiens.

The new season is almost upon most of you. I hope you enjoy the heritage you are continuing.

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Brian,
Faith and Reason are welcome brothers to the question that has been asked since the beginning of time. I don’t think it will ever be answered until the universe or God finally gives up the answers.
Brian

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How about glaciation and lowered sea levels?

During glacial periods (like the Last Glacial Maximum ~21,000 years ago), lower sea levels created a massive landmass called Sundaland, connecting Borneo to mainland Asia. While Palawan was linked to Borneo, Luzon remained isolated from the mainland. However, lowered sea levels did make crossing easier via island-hopping, likely involving shorter distances between emerging land masses in the Sulu Archipelago and around Taiwan.

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I thought about that, but the water between some of those islands is very deep and the volcanic islands are steep. Lowering the sea level even as much as the 450 feet that I think occurred during the glacial maximum would only have reduced some of the inter-island crossings by a little bit. A mile or two isn’t going to matter in a 60 mile crossing. It would still have to be intentional, prepared for, and done by someone who knew what he was doing.

We modern people like to think about our ancestors “migrating” as if a migration all happened in one journey. But that is very unrealistic. Hunter gatherers, including our H. erectus predecessors, often lived on the edge of survival and didn’t have the resources for long journeys other than seasonal ones where they already knew the destination. They wandered and followed opportunities or the weather, moving and spreading gradually generation by generation. Often, they needed to learn new floral and faunal resources in order to expand further - a process that might take generations for some really big adaptations. And we are primarily a coastal species. It is easy to imagine a progression where people gradually learn to go out onto the ocean to fish. Maybe on logs or adapted logs at first, followed by rafts of logs tied together. Did they learn to make dugouts or not? I don’t know, but H. erectus is called “the toolmaker”, so I wouldn’t put it past them. Anyway, they would gradually learn to go farther out and to return safely. I imagine they would try to reach other islands that they could see, first. But as they came to realize that islands existed in a long line and that some were farther than others, they would gradually start going out farther and looking for more distant ones. You might not be able to see a neighboring island from yours, but if you went out ten miles you might begin to see the top of it and know it is there. Eventually, someone is going to think: “I know I can survive out there for four days, maybe I’ll go out for two days and see what I can see…” It’s imagination, but makes sense to me and fits the evidence far better than any fantasy about someone drifting 60 miles on a log and then somehow founding a village. All by himself. Until recently that was the predominant theory.