Reply #12: The Polynesians had canoes. Very big canoes, but still, just canoes [View All]

[RaleighNCDUer]

with outriggers. And that is hardly high tech. Hand carved out of logs. Just because we have not found large boats from pre-history does not mean they did not exist. If you can cross 130 miles from New Guinea to Australia, why could you not cross 500 miles? If you can cross 500, why not a thousand? If a thousand, why not 5,000?

Progress is not a steady line. Technologies are developed, and then sometimes lost - it took us until 1850 to rediscover the formula for a form or concrete used by the Romans in the 1st century BCE. There could have been a maritime culture from 20,000 years ago that was technologically equal to the Polynesians which used their same resources - stone and shell and wood - that did not survive the end of the ice age, and all sign of them disappeared beneath the rising water.

As an aside, how do you know the open waters of the Southern Ocean of 15,000 or 20,000 years ago were anything like they are today? Wouldn't the ice age have a certain affect on the climate, the winds, the tides? Do you really have any idea what that effect might have been to that specific area?

Thing is, we're trying to guess the picture of a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle based on the 25 pieces we've found. We don't know a hell of a lot more than we know - but we have reason to believe that S America was colonized long before Clovis, and coming along that southern route is not really out of the question.