Did Homo sapiens sail to Australia 176,000 years ago?

[Kire]

DOWN UNDER HISTORY TAKES GIANT LEAP BACK
© 1996 by James Q. Jacobs
Did Homo sapiens sail to Australia 176,000 years ago? Stone artifacts from recent archaeological excavations indicate that Australia may have been populated as early as 176,000 years ago, more than triple previous estimates. Ochre samples from the dig, at Jinmium monolith in the Northern Territory, infer that the horizon of the earliest known human art extends to 116,000 years ago. Petroglyphs on the monolith and surrounding boulders are dated at 75,000 years old. Australian scientists Richard Fullager, Donald Price and Lesley Head report their startling findings in the December, 1996, issue of Antiquity.

The stone engravings, many thousands of precise circles, were discovered by Australian Museum scientist Richard Fullanger a decade ago. The petroglyph circles are 30.5 millimeters in diameter and vary in size and depth by no more than a few millimeters. Some of the glyphs were buried by one and one-half meters of sediment. Until recently 38,000 BP was the oldest established date of Australian occupancy. In 1990 Australian National University scientists Dr. Mike Smith and Dr. Rhys Jones published findings from Kakadu National Park, Northern Territory, establishing occupation by 50,000 BP. In 1995, the date was pushed back to 60,000 BP.

More: http://www.jqjacobs.net/writing/downundr.html

[Kolesar]

1. The polynesians island-hopped during the ice age when the seas were lower

...because the oceans' water was in the continental glaciers. Where I am sitting was under a mile of ice. The oceans did raise in the inter-glacial period and the mariners were then isolated out of reach of other populations.

[kcwayne]

3. I don't understand your point

Why would lower sea levels make water navigation easier, and higher sea levels infer more isolation? If you need a boat to sail from one point to another, it doesn't make any difference to the boat if you are on 20 ft of water or 2000ft.

[Kolesar]

5. Oh, because some of the islands got submerged and they lost use of them

The polynesians could confidently navigate using dead reckoning and other techniques when the distances between islands was shorter. When they lost these "stepping stone" islands, they had insurmountable distances to travel and ended up stranded in places like Easter Island.

[moobu2]

6. The continental shelf was exposed to some extent.

Many coastal dwelling ancient people had the technology to make small canoes type boats capable of making short ocean voyages. During Ice ages, the sea recedes exposing land bridges between some Islands and making distances between other land masses much smaller and easier to navigate in small boats.

Here's a graphic.

[kcwayne]

7. That is quite a visual

I thought I had read that the effect of another ice age would lower the sea level by 2-5 ft. I would have thought that to get that much land covered with water, it would be a rise of 100+ ft in sea level. That is an extraordinary geological event.

[xchrom]

2. boy -- we get around don't we?

[Violet_Crumble]

4. I'm still sticking stubbornly to the Gondwanaland theory...

It's much easier. Human beings migrated here by foot. Yeah, I know that theory went out the window sometime last century, but as a kid I used to think that the whole supercontinent thing was pretty cool, so I'm going to stubbornly cling to it...

Violet...