cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/43462600

This map shows the spread of Homo sapiens out of Africa and across the globe, with very approximate dates.

Author: Altaileopard in 2006

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[–] 31 points 8 months ago (2 children)

This map is really out of date. We now know there were humans in North America many thousands of years before "15,000 years ago".

This is a better representation: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8b/Early_migrations_mercator.svg/3840px-Early_migrations_mercator.svg.png

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago

    Note that there are studies that suggest a possibility of polynesian peoples traveling to South America around 1200 CE.

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8939867/

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Does this mean I can use the n-word?

    /s

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I still don't really know

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    I aint no homo sapien. Im a hetro sapien!

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I will always be amazed by the drive to cross oceans, especially in the arctic where death seems so much more likely. We still lose ships to the sea. How many additional people died simply from being off in their guessed direction by a few degrees? How many were lost at sea due to weather or not enough supplies? How many people does it take to reach and establish a viable colony? How bad did conditions have to get in the starting colony for a hundred people to say "alright, I'm gonna head out" and raft across the the unending horizon, head out for days, probably still see the land they left, still not see land ahead, and continue? Did they even have a choice by then or was it driven by the current?

    I scream, for I do not know. Thank you for coming to me Ted questionnaire

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    How did they even know if they would reach any land?

    If it were me I'd be like fuck it, I'm on land. I have no idea if there's anymore out there so I'm staying right here.

    And humanity would be fucked.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    My DNA says British/Irish, my grandparents say Irish/Scottish and my passport says Australian.

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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago

    I'm a Finn, meaning that part of my ancestors arrived along the arrow ending in Mongolia on this map. (And then, after we had already spread westwards, other people with different looking eyes arrived to the areas where the ancestors of Finns had once lived)

    Talk about a long way round!

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  • [–] -2 points 8 months ago

    I'm somehow mongolian with a hungarian-based language or something (Finnish)

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  • 13 comments in c/anthropology@mander.xyz view that post
    [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    The map is out of date for the Americas. ~22kbp footprints in NM, among other earlier dates.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago

    Several issues here:

    50Kya is a big pulse of human expansion in Australia, but arrival is reckoned at 60-65kya. Some even claim 80k+, but that fucks with out of africa dates.

    That 30k -> 1500 line for NZ is deceptive. That expansion actually starts in southern taiwan 3-5kya, or luzon 2.5kya if you count from the lapita culture, but not from new guinea.

    15kya is the major clovis expansion in the americas but like australia initial arrival was much earlier, maybe 22-25kya.

    100kya for the middle east is not the earliest sapiens presence in the area, but it's also not the wave that extant sapiens (us) descended from either, that's generally reckoned at 50-70kya.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Why did it take so long for humans to get to Madagascar? Even Australia was reached much sooner, and that's so much farther away and separated by wider oceans.

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    [–] 4 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I think it's such a funny quark of history that the Polynesians, despite their incredible sea exploration abilities, just apparently completely missed Australia.

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  • [+] 7 points 8 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    I don't know. There is linguistic, archeological and genetic evidence that the Polynesians traded with the South Americans, but I don't think there is nearly as robust evidence for Australia.

    Current evidence as I understand it is really just as that map depicts it. That they went straight from Indonesia to New Zealand, and just missed Australia.

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  • [+] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    I personally think your third possibility is the least likely. I just find it unimaginable that there would not have been any cultural exchange at all of the two peoples knew about each other.

    I can imagine human beings, even extremely capable ones, just missing things. In fact that happened a lot. There were many European cultures that had the technical capability to sail to the Americans for thousands of years before they did it. And there were clothes in the Americas that had the capability to go the other way, but they didn't.

    As someone else pointed out, there is a similar story for Madagascar. There were plenty of cultures that could have discovered it for centuries that just didn't. Similar stories with countless other islands.

    Honestly, I think it's more surprising that the indigenous Australian peoples discovered the continent when they did. They were the only animals to make the jump across the straight.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    If those 'dates' are supposed to be 'years ago' in those unlabeled numbers NZ is wrong, it should be 800-1000.

    Also the Polynesian diaspora is woefully underrepresented by that tiny misshapen Pacific Ocean.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    It’s mad no-one ever thought to go into the Arabian peninsula.

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  • 6 comments in c/history@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Interesting that they repeatedly use the word "hominims" and not "humans." The point being that hominims includes all species of humans and chimpanzees.

    So, they're talking about any of a number of possible human species (there were six as recently as 50Kyrs ago) and possibly even some very clever chimps.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago

    Cerutti is heavily debated and most serious discussions of humans in the americas ignore it. The supposed association with stone tools fails to convince most archaeologists. A mastadon died there 130kya. That's all cerutti can prove.

    Last i heard most experts think the bones were broken by modern construction equipment not ancient hominins.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    Technically prehistory but OK.

    Would be interesting to have an update. There's been a lot of new discoveries in the last 20 years.

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  • 4 comments in c/dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    The Dawn of Everything, by David Graeber and David Wengrow. Reaaaally great book about this, and many other cool things humans did a long time ago.

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  • [+] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago

    So still no humans on Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, Japan ...?

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