Choice quote-
“I was flabbergasted,” said Boston University archaeologist and stone-tool expert Curtis Runnels. “The idea of finding tools from this very early time period on Crete was about as believable as finding an iPod in King Tut’s tomb.”
And another-
Moreover, the discovery could spark a host of other scientific debates.
If ancient humans were crossing the Mediterranean, Runnels said, then they certainly could have crossed other water barriers, such as the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. “And that means that the assumptions that we have had—that the peopling of Eurasia was done by early hominins moving overland through the Near East, into India and down—will have to be revisited.” Hominins, or hominids, are members of humankind’s ancestral lineage.
Time just gets deeper and deeper…
Hot shit! This is tremendous. My fave quote:
“Many researchers have hypothesized that the early humans of this time period were not capable of devising boats or navigating across open water.”
Let those researchers now face scorn and opprobrium. They were talking out their ass! And probably trashing scientists who disagreed with them all these years.
The problem is they confuse absence of evidence for total implausibility, when in fact, in this case, there may have been no evidence but it’s been totally fucking plausible the entire time.
Comment by Jim — February 18, 2010 @ 3:14 pm