How capable were early hominins of crossing water?

[Judi Lynn]

How capable were early hominins of crossing water?
18 Jan 2019
Last summer I published a piece on Medium about the possible ancient existence of hominins on Luzon: “This is where scientists may find the next hobbits”.

For people who may not be familiar with this story yet, a study in Nature last year by Ingicco and colleagues (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0072-8) reports on the butchered remains of an ancient rhinoceros from a place called Kalinga, on the island of Luzon. The bones have cutmarks and at least one percussion mark, and were found with some stone flakes, and one hammerstone. The remains are around 700,000 years old.

A reader asked me to dig back into the behavior issue:

I have a question for Prof Hawks. Given the recent discovery of hominin presence in the Philippines, do you think that paleoanthropologists have been underestimating the extent of behaviour possible by archaic humans as far as possibly Homo erectus?

The islands of Indonesia had very different geographic connections in the past. Java, Borneo, and Sumatra are large islands that were connected to the Asian mainland during periods when the sea level was 120 meters lower than today. That’s why they had (and still have) animals like rhinoceros, tigers, and orangutans that were also common in Southeast Asia.



More:
http://johnhawks.net/weblog/topics/mailbag/early-hominin-water-crossings-2019.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Initially I read the thread title as "How capable were early hoomins of crossing water?"

I thought the OP had been written by LOLcats.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

2. Humans, including early hominims,

were a whole lot smarter than most of us realize. They lived in their environment fully. We modern technological humans don't.

I recall many years ago reading things that expressed amazement that current "primitive" (meaning non-technological) humans could do things like find water in a hostile environment. Excuse me? This is the environment they know, their ancestors have known for thousands of years. They are outside almost all the time.

Plus, humans are, on average, very smart. The reason every single mother will tell you her child is a genius is that she sees proof: she says a baby who can do nothing but eat, pee, and poop, but within a year is beginning to walk and talk. If that's not genius, I don't know what is.

Modern humans live almost entirely apart from their environment. That's a relatively recent development. So what if current 17 year olds can't figure out how to dial a rotary phone? Those same 17 year olds navigate their environment quite well, thank you very much. Which is exactly what we humans always do.