Re: Brideshead and paleo anthropology revisited

On 10.9.2024. 8:10, JTEM wrote:

  Mario Petrinovic wrote:
]

Madagascar separated from mainland 180 mya, and it has primates.

>
Lemurs are only dated back there about 70 million years,
quite a long spell after you 180 million year mark.
>
So you see the issue:  Dugout Canoes are not necessary.

 

         The dating, of course, doesn't give you the ultimate number.

 Yes but even if it's off by 100% that's still 40 million years shy of
your number... without a dugout canoe in sight.

Still it doesn't matter. There is a fossil record bias, a lot of animals we will never find. We do have the outcome, today's world, and we have to use logic to figure out how today's world emerged, not constrain our thinking solely on fossil record, although fossil record is extremely helpful.

Well we both know that Australia is a special case, that famous
Wallace Line going on, which is probably why you're ignoring my
point about seeing the wild fires...
>
Assuming they did arrive much later, Australia was still much larger,
sea level lower -- the land closer together -- and they would have
known the land was there because they could see the evidence from the
wild fires.
>
So, Australia being the one and only example where they likely
couldn't have just grabbed a log, held on & started kicking with their
feet, they didn't need anything particularly sea worthy. Just something
that would have allowed them to rest.

 

         I really don't see in which way Australia would be worse case than South America.

 Maybe it has something to do with the Wallace Line? You think that may
be why I brought it up? Hmm?

What is the "Wallace line" to you? A lot of animals never cross it. How is Wallace line worse than Atlantic Ocean? In your eyes Wallace line is wide all the way to Mars, while Atlantic Ocean is just a little pond. Hm.

You being brain damaged you missed the fact that I said that they hardly
every sailed beyond view of the land. And they didn't. Communication
sucked, there was no such thing as weather reports and help was unlikely
to ever materialize.
>
What morons like you do is forget WHAT a ship was and WHY is was so
useful to the romans. Fact is, it was a trail car. A railroad car. You
could carry far more weight -- VASTLY more weight -- on water and with
a tiny fraction of the effort. So ships were trains of even the "Trucks"
of their day:  Load them up in THIS port, cart it all over to THAT port.
>
There were some point where you probably wanted to cross the open water,
do to time. But a smart sailor would avoid it.
>
Besides the all-to-real threat of storms, pirates and other problems,
there's a limited amount of food and water you can take with you!

 

         It is you who doesn't understand the piracy problem at all. Even today we have piracy in some passageways, like Singapore Strait, off the coast of Peru, the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa, the Gulf of Guinea, South China Sea.

 And we don't have RADAR to warn us of the proximity of other ships, and
we lack radio and satellite communications to call for help, just like
in ancient times. That, or you're being a tit. Again.

You really don't know those things. Pirates have fast boats, and they are armed. You can call for help, no problemo, pirates don't care, lol. When do you think that help will arrive?

You bring it from Cornwall to the coast. Then, following the coast you
reach a point with a very short crossing distance, then then cross.
 From there, you unload or follow the coast to whatever your destination
part is.
>
But, your trip was almost all within eyesight of the coast.

 

         They found traces of Minoans in Norway,

 No. Someone claimed that they found carvings. But there's claims like
that everywhere!
 

"The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Phoenicians sailed around the British Isles on their way to the tin mines of Cornwall.".

 I'm willing to say that you're confused and meant this:
 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassiterides
 Traders are known to have invented tall tales to mask the true location
of their products - and hence eliminate competition - but science has
gotten pretty good at pinpointing the origins of metals.
 It's pretty easy, with the right equipment and a database of results...
 A hand held device can tell you the composition of a metal -- it's
purity and it's impurities -- then you just match that to a source...

Yes, but: "Control of the tin trade seems to have been in Phoenician hands, and they kept their sources secret.". If the source was nearer, it wouldn't be a secret. Probably you can determine the source of unused tin, but what about tin which was smelted into bronze.