What About River Nile?
Mon Nov 09 23:12:28 GMT 2009 by Uwe Kerkow
http://mediawatchblog.org
Why make it more complicated than it is. If I had to walk from Kenia to Israel (!) I would choose the banks of river Nile. Abundant water, enough greenery and game...
I always find it fascinating what all the amateur scientist think. Uwe have you studied anthropology or any other related subject? Do you have deep knowledge in this area? If not, your comment is for naught
What About River Nile?
Tue Nov 10 08:46:21 GMT 2009 by sciencebod
http://www.colinb-sciencebuzz.blogspot.com
But there's another "amateur scientist" (amateur re human pre-history that is) who is also puzzled by this article, and seeking explanations. Yes, it would be nice once in a while to hear from the specialists, but fellow amateurs sometimes know the answer.
It's not just the Nile that provides a trans-Saharan route. It's the fact that there were permanent settlements in the north-centre of the Sahara some 7000 years ago - in the Hoggar - not just with cave paintings showing organized society (wedding ceremonies etc) but the remains of elephants, rhinos, hippos etc. That speaks of a Sahara very different from the one that exists today. If the near-centre supported humans and game 7000 years ago, imagine how much greener it may have been if one were to wind the clock back till further. That in turn suggests the existence of long-distance routes, at least for salt and ivory, and probably for a wider range of traded goods.
Even now there are a few remnant populations of Nile crocodiles living in some isolated water pools in the middle of the Sahara- all that's left of rivers that used to flow there. I thought it was well-known that the Sahara was greener about 10K ago. But that does not mean you can extrapolate backwards to assume it must have been even greener earlier on. Probably it goes up and down, and between the wet periods of 50,000 ago and 10,000 years ago, a dry period prevailed.
Okay, after voicing my amateur opinion, I had a look at Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahara
"The climate of the Sahara has undergone enormous variation between wet and dry over the last few hundred thousand years. During the last glacial period, the Sahara was even bigger than it is today, extending south beyond its current boundaries. The end of the glacial period brought more rain to the Sahara, from about 8000 BC to 6000 BC, perhaps due to low pressure areas over the collapsing ice sheets to the north."
That seems a little harsh. I thought it was an intelligent and interesting question. If it's based on some core misconception, I'd be interested to know what it is.
My guess (as someone who is not even an amateur scientist) is that the article does not mean the Sahara was a barrier in an absolute sense. Probably some determined individuals would have been capable of finding a route across, following rivers or waterholes. But if the area was hostile and relatively difficult to cross, it is hard to understand why large numbers of people left relatively green areas in order to cross it.
Would the author like to comment?
Your guess is right. I studied agriculture.
But please - if you call my comment naught, explain why. Thank you.
"Do you have deep knowledge in this area? If not, your comment is for naught"
If only experts on the subject with deep knowledge are allowed to voice their opinion here, the comments section will soon get pretty empty. Experts are usually busy studying their subjects after all, not writing comments on a pop science website. And where would NS gets its revenue from then?
Uwe's post was a meaningful contribution to the discussion, in contrary to yours.
Yes - I was thinking exactly that. People came out of Africa in small groups anyway. We aren't talking about mass migration.
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'And both genetic analysis and archaeology show that humans didn't spread extensively beyond Africa until 50,000 years ago' - this statement is incorrect, our line of modern-humans began migrating out of Africa around 85-80,000 years-ago via the southern point of the red sea, and had arrived in south-east Asia; china around 75.000 years-ago. 'The manju L3 (m2) has a local age of 73,000 years-ago in India', Stephen Oppenheimer, 2003; 'Out of Eden'
Whichever figure is correct, if they left by sea, were they capable of building boats or rafts? What about water, supplies, navigation etc.? We have no indication so far that they had any precursor technology. Even a documentary attempting to show how the inhabitants of Papua set out for Australia on bamboo rafts looked like wild speculation to me.
"were they capable of building boats or rafts?"
Why wouldn't they be? They were fully modern humans with the same brain capacity as us. If you ever spend time with "primitive" peoples, you'd be impressed by how ingenuously they use natural materials to craft whatever they need, and how much knowledge they have of the natural world around them. None of all that leaves fossil traces. If you doubt our ancestors were capable of building seaworthy rafts, then how do you explain the presence of Aboriginals in Australia?
As I remember now; it was the dry-spell that allowed humans to exit Africa due to falling sea-levels that allowed our walking ancestors to exit by foot alone.
Jeff Hecht is describing evidence for the wet-spell that allowed the migration of the last-migration prior to our own out of Africa; at its northern exit land-bridge around 120,000 years ago; which has been more or less static. That almost resulted in an earlier peopling of the world, if it was not for the dry spell that trapped the population in the Levant and smited them around 90,000 years ago.
There was earlier dry-spells, but modern humans did not exit Africa due to equivalent peoples on the other side, it is believed that absence of these archaic humans allowed our ancestors to finally make the historic journey
I agree with the spirit of your comment. Humans had left Eastern Africa prior to the second 'wet era' that this article describes. It may not be that the 2nd wet era allowed them to leave Eastern Africa, rather it allowed them to build up greater populations in their other settlements and also to settle in even more areas.
In other words, it is wholey possible that the wet era was not confined to Eastern Africa.
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Yes, the sad truth is, no matter how we talk about living on the savanna and how humans can live anywhere, we all live and always have lived right at the water hole. Especially until we learned how to carry water (did you ever wonder why the first domesticated plant was the bottle gourd?). Every other chimp in the forest could walk away from the water hole. Not us, we had to stop for a drink ever couple hours, at best, if not more often. Hell, we're the chimps that like to go swimming. Still do.
What made us different from the other upright hominins, of which we're finding out there were bunches? We lived down by the water where the good food was. We still do live down by the water. We never left it. It made us who we are, from our nakedness to our diet to our big brains. Trust me, it wasn't nut gatherers out on the savanna that made us human; it was meat eaters down by the river.
And when the forest disappeared, those other guys disappeared too. We didn't, because the rivers and the lakes survived. Not as many or as big as before, but they survived. And we did, too. And we kept eating well and getting smarter.
The rest is history.
Point well taken re: mankinds proclivity towards living near water. Even today some 90% of the world population lives close to a body of water, whether it be a river, ocean, lake or sea
I think you have it backwards: the homonids that preceeded us discovered how to carry water, thus removing much of the exolutionary pressure to survive for long periods without water was.
In other words: we didn't use bottle gourds because we are human, we are human because the homonids before us used bottle gourds.
And, as far as nut eaters vs meat eaters, it was both. Just look at your teeth. :)
actually I think in Africa, people have tended not to live near water holes, probably an adaptation for dealing with malaria. (from Jared Diamonds Guns Germs Steel)
This gives a good broad window across the desert barrier but they could have also followed the Nile North as well as the Red Sea shore. My guess is that all possible routes have been used in both directions by variety of Mammal species
Then they probably filled animal skins with water, put them in their canoes and paddled up the coast.
Following Migrations?
Tue Nov 10 13:40:20 GMT 2009 by Mat Bee
http://www.matbee.com
Although I don't disagree with some of these comments, but, wouldn't these early homo sapiens have followed the seasonal migrations of some of these animals?
I'm no expert, but, from what I've noticed the animals even of today don't follow the Nile due to predation. The homo sapiens would have most likely followed benign herds of, say, cattle. No?
So this article does make sense to me. Sure it would have been easier to follow a river -- but predators live there. Not a smart move for a species as us.
I would like to hear the theories about why the climate was changing 120,000 years ago. This article suggests that the climate in the region yo-yo'd in history; dry before 120,000 bce, then wet at 120,000 bce, then dry again, then wet again at 50,000 bce, and now dry.
Not that I'm an expert, but wouldn't those oscillations in climate probably be related with the coming and going of the ice sheets?
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Philosophical Link
Wed Nov 11 14:34:47 GMT 2009 by Qudrt-e-Moula
http://not applicable, however i am working as acting editor of website, dhakanews24.com
Dear Moderator/Administrator,
I am a Bangladeshi journalist and have been reading New Scientist for many years and a fan of it indeed.
I feel that the research findings that have been reflected in the current article might become a clue to link incidents mentiioned in Holy Books and Legends including Old Testament.
Wishing all out success of the website.
with thanks
Qudrat-e-Moula
And now we can go to isreal for the weekend and it doesnt even cost that much. Amazing
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