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A team of researchers that included an N.C. State University geologist found evidence that our ancestors were crossing open water at least 130,000 years ago. That's more than 100,000 years earlier than scientists had previously thought.
Their evidence is based on stone tools from the island of Crete. Because Crete has been an island for eons, any prehistoric people who left tools behind would have had to cross open water to get there.
The tools the team found are so old that they predate the human species, said Thomas Strasser, an archaeologist from Providence College who led the team. Instead of being made by our species, Homo sapiens, the tools were made by our ancestors, Homo erectus.
The tools are very different from any others found on Crete, Strasser said. They're most similar to early Stone Age tools from Africa that are about 700,000 years old, he said.
Initially the team didn't have any way to date the tools.
That's where NCSU geologist Karl Wegmann came in.
At the time, Wegmann didn't know much about archaeology, but he did know quite a bit about Crete's geology. He had been figuring out the ages of Crete's rock formations to study earthquakes.
A few of the stone tools the team had discovered were embedded in those same rock formations. Those rocks were formed from ancient beach sands, Wegmann said.
Today, the rocks and the tools embedded in them are hundreds of feet above the shore.
The same process that drives the region's strong earthquakes - colliding continents - is pushing Crete upward out of the sea at a rate of less than 1/20 of an inch every year.
The island's slow rise has preserved beaches from many eras as terraces along the coast.
The lower terraces are the easiest to date. Scientists can measure the age of seashells embedded in the rock using radioactive carbon dating.
This method estimates the age of those terraces at about 45,000 and 50,000 years old.
"We know that (the tools) are tens of meters above the terrace we dated at 50,000 years old, so we know right off the bat that they have to be at least that old," Wegmann said.
But 50,000 years ago is carbon dating's limit. Anything older has to be dated using another method.
Originally posted by Haxsaw
Next they'll find tools more than a million years old on some deserted island and tell us the apes must of travelled the high seas.
On a side note, I'm sick of them calling us all homo's, that's just offensive, if we were all homo's then the human race would of died out.
Originally posted by Haxsaw
We have a CREATOR, but it certinaly isnt the nephilim/aliens/annunaki/fallen-angels/lucifer/satan/demons, they'll just do what they can to make you think they made us. They are just slime balls with better technology, that will prey on a civilizations vulnerabilites, they've done it since day one, they cant be trusted, forget all the new age crap and the errors of the ancients who worshipped nephilim/aliens/annunaki/fallen-angels/lucifer/satan/demons and concentrate on believing in the ONE UNSEEN GOD who created everything.
Originally posted by Hanslune
One nitpick, due to the lower sea level the trip to Crete would have been a coastal voyage from land sight to land sight and not 'deep sea'. Indeed the article uses the term 'open water' which is more correct.edit on 28/8/11 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)
Originally posted by Xcathdra
Originally posted by Hanslune
One nitpick, due to the lower sea level the trip to Crete would have been a coastal voyage from land sight to land sight and not 'deep sea'. Indeed the article uses the term 'open water' which is more correct.edit on 28/8/11 by Hanslune because: (no reason given)
I was thinking about the whole concept of a world civilization theory and this article and it made me wonder if thats more accurate than what we first thought. 100k years erlier and our ancestors were saling the ocenas. Your comment above brings in another good point about sea levels at the time and how the water levels were a lot lower.
We are finding cities, some advanced, undermeath the ocean, all over the place, from the Middle East, to the Indian Ocean, Pacific, Atlantic. Scientists in antartica are finding that it used to be more temperate. We have the Peresi Map that shows what Antartica looked like before it was buried under a mountain of ice.
I think that if we accept the fact that our ancestors sailed the ocean earlier than thought, that a lot of the unexplained findings might actually start to fit together. Just from what ive read lately I am leaning more and more in favor of a global civilization a long time ago.