Tracking Stone Age mariners: projecting into the past

ABSTRACT

It has become increasingly clear that, through the millennia, travel by water has been generally safer, faster, and more economical than travel by land. Humans possessed seagoing watercraft early on, disablings and uncontrolled storm-generated drifts would inevitably have occurred, and the prevailing winds and oceanic surface currents would have impelled some of these craft over oceans, leading to insular and extrahemispheric discoveries and exchanges. Intentional exploratory voyages also occurred. Although there is much material evidence of developed watercraft from the Late Neolithic on, few Stone Age vessel vestiges other than of logboats have been recovered archaeologically. However, indirect means exist to obtain a sense of what occurred long ago. First is demonstration of very early human presences on islands. Here, many contemporary scientific proxies for otherwise-undocumented human occupancy are described. In the New World, the presence of tropical/subtropical human intestinal parasites implies trans-ocean crossings impressively early in time, including by the seventh millennium B.C.

KEYWORDS:

• Stone Age watercraft
• Stone Age voyaging
• early island colonization
• transoceanic contacts
• proxies for human presence

Acknowledgements

This work is substantially augmented from invited paper ID 301, “Stone Age Mariners: Projecting into the Past”, in the session “Stone Age Seas: Mapping Voyages and Maritime Diffusions” (E14-05) at the Ninth World Archaeological Congress (WAC-9), Prague, Czech Republic, July 2022; the session organizer was Alice Beck Kehoe and Bettina Schulz Paulsson. A few facts not otherwise referenced are from oral presentations by Susan O’Connor, Helen Farr, and Christian Reepmeyer at WAC-9. Steve Elkins and two anonymous reviewers suggested several relevant references, and the reviewers also made useful suggestions for augmentation and other improvement of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Terms such as “Stone Age,” “Paleolithic,” “Mesolithic,” “Neolithic,” and “Chalcolithic” are notably ambiguous, in that although defined by pre-smelted-metals levels of technology and differing levels of sophistication in stone-shaping, locally they also represent chronological periods. The problem that arises is that the time depths and durations differ among the different relevant geographic regions; and, not all regional societies passed through identical “stages” via identical processes or display all the same elements in association. The use of these designations in the present article is largely technological and relative-chronological.

2 The Mesolithic Pesse boat, from the Netherlands.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Stephen C. Jett

Stephen C. Jett is Professor Emeritus and past Chair of Geography, and Professor Emeritus of Textiles and Clothing, University of California, Davis. His principal research interests are Navajo culture and history, including architecture, agriculture, placenames, and sacred places; plus pre-Columbian transoceanic interactions. He is the author/co-author of several books (two, award-winning), the latest being Ancient Ocean Crossings: Reconsidering the Case for Contacts with the Pre-Columbian Americas (Alabama, 2017). Jett is founder and editor of Pre-Columbiana: A Journal of Long-Distance Contacts. He is a 2007 recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award (Marquis Who’s Who) and has been a Fellow of The Explorers Club since 1980.